/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18898000]

Where does one begin with /lit/ on Buddhism? And how should one go about practicing Buddhism authentically in the West?

[Anonymous No.18898006]

>worshipping demons
Why though?

[Anonymous No.18898025]

Atman

[Anonymous No.18898036]

>>18898006
>Buddha demands your foreskin
since when?

[Anonymous No.18898057]

>>18898000
Buddhism is easy to practice. If you're a neet doing nothing all day but also living comfortable on neetbucks you're already living the middle way.

[Anonymous No.18898060]

Lost all respect I once had for Buddhism once I actually figured out what anatta meant.

[Anonymous No.18898142]

>>18898060
filtered

[Anonymous No.18898169]

>>18898060
read the Pali Canon, the Buddha never states outright that there is no self, only that there is no atman as the Hindus characterized it and that it is an error to identify the 'self' with any of the 5 aggregates

[Anonymous No.18898275]

[Anonymous No.18898283]

>>18898169
no atman = no self lmao

[Anonymous No.18898310]

>>18898060
>>18898283
What's the big deal with no self? It's true.

[Anonymous No.18898319]

>>18898310
If there is no self, if you strip away the 5 percepts/aggregates, what gets reincarnated? What gets enlightened?

[Anonymous No.18898546]

>>18898319
>i have to be personally permanent and eternal, because I just have to, okay?
Completely and devastatingly filtered. You understood nothing that you read, and what's worse want it redefined such that it would no longer mean what it means but what you'd like it to mean, i.e. you get to live permanently forever as an incorruptable personality. No-self is pretty straightforward: selves are dependently originated phenomena and as such have no intrinsic existence or permanence. Rebirth (or reincarnation) is the expression of cause-and-effect, enlightenment is the cessation of actions leading to it.

[Anonymous No.18898596]

>>18898546
>Rebirth (or reincarnation) is the expression of cause-and-effect, enlightenment is the cessation of actions leading to it.
why should I care about rebirth or reincarnation or the pursuit of enlightenment if it won't be me who lives on in the next life?

[Anonymous No.18898678]

>>18898596
>why should I care about rebirth or reincarnation or the pursuit of enlightenment if it won't be me who lives on in the next life?
You shouldn't. These teachings are not directed at hylics like you.

[Anonymous No.18898817]

>>18898678
>NPC calling anyone else a hylic

[Anonymous No.18898831]

>NPC calling anyone else a hylic

[Anonymous No.18899014]

>>18898546
>selves are dependently originated phenomena
originated from what? there must be a way of establishing permance to the self.

[Anonymous No.18899060]

>>18898831
Basedjak, that's very enlightened of you.

[Anonymous No.18899061]

>>18898678
Can you answer that question though? How is it really reincarnation if it’s not a personal reincarnation of the self? What is it that’s reincarnating?

[Anonymous No.18899085]

>>18898000
first choose a school, the 3 main schools theravada, mahayana, vajrayana,are pretty different from each other, with different practices and goals
https://youtu.be/FAazFDC8m6M
you need to think which school could work better for you

[Anonymous No.18899108]

There is no /lit/ way of understanding Buddhism.
Buddha already gave you the eightfold path towards enlightenment.
The Dhammapada is also excellent, but only if a monk explains the teachings.
Ultimately, buddhism is about self-liberation so it's a solitary path but don't expect to do this on your own.

[Anonymous No.18899110]

>>18899061
It's not reincarnation, it's rebirth. The actions that you do in this life and don't get to cause their karma upon you before you die, after death they give birth to a new living being according to their moral nature. Buddhist rebirth cause and effect, not some eternal soul going from one body to another. (and the Hindu reincarnation is similar, the Atman is unmoved, it's incarnations follow one another according to their actions, it's New Age hippies that imagine reincarnation as your personal soul going from one life to another)

[Anonymous No.18899135]

>>18898596
>why should I care about rebirth or reincarnation or the pursuit of enlightenment if it won't be me who lives on in the next life?
because you suffer, you don't do things because you want to, you do them because there's a previous context that push you to do them
in this case suffering, suffering is the signal that you should do something about your existence
buddhism destroy all the added metaphysical bullshit to go straight to the problem, we suffer becaus ewe have wrong notions of the dinamics of reality, those wrong notions end up creating ideas like a soul, or a god, but in reality all that is just a way our minds cope with the fact that we can't truly accomodate our way of perceving, that is with ideas, whch are categorical and thus eternal, and reality itself which is in a cosntant state of flux, pure becoming, ourinavility to perceive that pure becoming of reality forces us to create ideas of metaphysical identities, like gods and a "superior" self, gettign rid of tham is the first stpe to actually start to perceive the dinamicsof reality in a more correct way and thus free ourself of the suffering that arises from our disconection with the world

[Anonymous No.18899138]

>>18898596
Your brain must be so huge dude. Definitely super jealous

[Anonymous No.18899151]

>>18899014
>there must be a way of establishing permance to the self
Why? You already know you aren't permanent. You burst out of a woman a few decades ago.

[Anonymous No.18899173]

>>18898319
>>18898596
>>18899061

this is a good vid about what anatta actually means
https://youtu.be/wUDnPy6ACG4

[Anonymous No.18899195]

>>18899085
>>18899173
stop it

[Anonymous No.18899203]

don't ask /lit/. posting and lurking on 4chan violate at least at least half the precepts of the Noble 8 fold path.

Chantards pick and choose which parts they happen to like the idea of then disgard the rest. They're like the worst type of west-coast religious tourist. pic related.

[Anonymous No.18899220]

>>18899014
>originated from what?
the infnite regress problem was already solved by hume, in order to be an ontological first cause, cause and effect must be ontological themselves but they aren't they're subjective phenomena, since in order to be objective it must be a third moment that bind the cause and the effect together in a coherent whole, thatthird moment don't exist, signaling that in reality cause and effect is a way of the mind to arrange the constante becoming of reality

https://youtu.be/0rvRPenl6Qk

https://youtu.be/o5IcWj-99Ag

[Anonymous No.18899245]

>>18898596
It's not a different person either though. The basic personality gets transferred to your new body. Imagine if someone erased your memory and put your brain into a new body. Some aspect of you would continue to exist, and you could face the consequences of developing an addictive personality, or being quick to anger.

[Anonymous No.18899252]

>>18898000
The works of Tsongkhapa. He condensed all of the Buddha’s teachings into a series of three treatises entitled the Lam Rim Chen Mo.

[Anonymous No.18899259]

>>18899014
>originated from what? there must be a way of establishing permance to the self.
not at all, see the paradox of extension, there's nothing logically or physically that lead us to think a first principle is needed in reality, since extension is just how our system of conceptualisation arranges reality, we are the ones who need first principles, not reality itself, thus a first prinicple isn't needed to explain a particular or general form of existence

[Anonymous No.18899315]

>>18898678
>You shouldn't. These teachings are not directed at hylics like you.
you do not sound very close to enlightenment if your pride comes about from calling someone gnostic meme words on 4chan
>>18899135
I get where you're coming from, but unless non-self means what it means in the Pali Canon (i.e. your self not related to the 5 aggregates, but there still being some presence of a self in all beings)
keep in mind the Buddha refused to answer whether there is a self or is there not a self, I think the "self" is every being's innate capacity to achieve Nibbana, as well as being the "same" entity as you have been in your past life and still carrying on the same karmic residue, be it positive or negative
>>18899245
I don't think "personality" carries on from one life to the next, I believe that at some point, either in one of the jhana phases or phases of stream entry, a disciple effectively abandons his "personality", all that is left of it is loving kindness, equanimity, and wisdom

[Anonymous No.18899341]

>>18899315
>>18899135
forgot to add on some points
The Buddha refused to answer whether there is a self or not a self because it is irrelevant, and I doubt either of the two is true and he knew one to be true over the other, since then he would probably have simply answered
there is a self, but it is not attached to any of the 5 aggregates including consciousness, and since we often identify consciousness the most with our "self", then it is hard for people to see any other sort of "self" other than that, so adhering to a doctrine of "self" which doesn't adhere to any of the 5 aggregates would be complex, while rejecting the idea of a self fully would be annihilationist and effectively render rebirth insignificant, if every "self" was annihilated at death, and your own karmic residue was assigned to some random other being

[Anonymous No.18899781]

>>18898000
Theravada Pali Canon

[Anonymous No.18899826]

>>18898275
I've been finding most of these for free on archive.org

[Anonymous No.18899833]

>>18899203
speak for yourself shitforbrains OP got many great posts in this thread outside of your nagging.

[Anonymous No.18899859]

someone correct me if I'm wrong but from what I understood, what is "reincarnated" is the residual wants and desires left after you die. In that sense, your same wants and desire arise with a new consciousness with a similar modus operandi.

[Anonymous No.18900236]

>>18898319
>
>>18899859
I was taught that it's the Skandhas themselves that reincarnate, but I'm mahayana and it seems like most Chan buddhists are Therevada

[Anonymous No.18900248]

>>18898596
Umm, because Buddha told you to sweaty

[Anonymous No.18900258]

>>18899135
Ok, explain to me why I shouldn’t be the rat in the cage pushing the pleasure button.

[Anonymous No.18900287]

>>18898319
>what gets reincarnated?
Nothing, Buddhists don't believe in reincarnation, they believe in rebirth.
>but they're the same thing!
No, they aren't. Rebirth implies a completely different conception of being. Buddhism proposes that things exist in ways fundamentally different than what is proposed by, say, Aristotelianism or Platonism (these two obviously differ between each other). That's the entire point. That's why it's the Middle Way. The Buddha is proposing a completely different understanding of reality.

>>18898000
Start with What the Buddha Taught, then read the Heart Sutra.

[Anonymous No.18900714]

>>18900258
Because you'll never be satisfied. You'll keep pushing the button more and more until it finally kills you. You'll never be able to finally rest. If you don't see anything wrong with that, then maybe Buddhist ideas won't work for you.

[Anonymous No.18900744]

>>18900258
>He doesn't know that pleasure is suffering

[Anonymous No.18902398]

Is Buddhism the ultimate NPC religion?

[Anonymous No.18902432]

>>18898000
Why would you want to become a nihilist? Just look at all the bugmen ITT denying the soul, it's like I'm on /r/atheism. Pathetic

[Anonymous No.18902443]

>>18902398
Unironically yes. Just look at posts like >>18900287 and try to picture the kind of person who would write shit like this.

[Anonymous No.18902486]

>>18902443
>try to picture the kind of person who would write shit like this

[Anonymous No.18902503]

>>18900287
>The Buddha is proposing a completely different understanding of reality.
The Buddha proposed a doctrine of transcendence, a way to achieve transcendence, not a "way of understanding reality." Buddhism is not a philosophy, no matter how much Western intellectuals try to misportray it as such. Try reading the actual canon and not pseudointellectual commentary. A lot of people are not aware that there is zero ontological content in Buddhism. At best, you could say there is epistemological content, but even this errs toward miscomprehension. Fundamentally, the only postulate Buddha put forward as necessarily true, was that life is unsatisfactory, and that by following his practice one could transcend this lack of selfhood and satisfaction.

[Anonymous No.18902505]

>>18898025
No such thing >>18898025

[Anonymous No.18902692]

>>18899151
> You already know you aren't permanent. You burst out of a woman a few decades ago.
>conflating ‘you’ with the physical body
Weird how Buddhists adopt views and do things which are exactly what Buddha told them NOT to do or accept when trying to dunk on non-Buddhist views

[Anonymous No.18902704]

>>18899220
>but they aren't they're subjective phenomena
do you have proof?
>since in order to be objective it must be a third moment that bind the cause and the effect together in a coherent whole,
do you have proof?
>thatthird moment don't exist
do you have proof?

[Anonymous No.18902726]

>>18899341
>there is a self, but it is not attached to any of the 5 aggregates including consciousness, and since we often identify consciousness the most with our "self", then it is hard for people to see any other sort of "self" other than that
If the self isn’t concious or conciousness but is some mysterious and unknowable hypothetical like an invisible ego following you around which you have no evident relation to or way of knowing, does that not make the very notion of “self” meaningless? What would even be the point of accepting a self as different from the aggregates if it had no connection to one’s own awareness, presence, conciousness etc?

[Anonymous No.18902732]

>>18902726
>What would even be the point
None.
Now stop wasting your time with this nihilistic bullshit and go back to western thinkers.

[Anonymous No.18902743]

>>18900714
>You'll never be able to finally rest
Well actually according to you its guaranteed at death for every living being since their conciousness/awareness isnt what is reborn, there is no continuity of the experiencer from one rebirth to the next. So, each being has its experiencing conciousness annihilated just like materialists also accept this. This isn’t really “rest” since something that doesn’t exist anymore isnt resting, but leaving that aside the inplication of your position on rebirth is that its unnecessary for living beings to follow the Buddhist path in order to attain permanent freedom from rebirth, since this happens to every being ineveitably when their body dies, as the former experiencer or awareness doesn’t continue.

[Anonymous No.18902757]

>>18902505
>No such thing
The Atman is real. The Buddhist explanations of how concious experience takes place without an unchanging presence of awareness as the guiding light are illogical and dont match up with our lived experience.

[Anonymous No.18902769]

Why does Buddhism scare /lit/ so much?

[Anonymous No.18902777]

I feel like a different person in a way every moment really but I still think I am my awareness.

[Anonymous No.18902816]

Religion sometimes seems like different degrees of depersonalisation disorder

[Anonymous No.18902819]

>>18902769
Nihilism doesn't scare anyone with a triple digit IQ; it's just naturally rejected as a dead-end not even worth talking about let alone debating.

[Anonymous No.18902870]

>>18900287
Well? Going to respond to my post?

>>18902486
Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.18902872]

>>18902816
You're suffering from psychologization disorder

[Anonymous No.18903061]

>>18902870
>Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.18903171]

>>18902692
You're ever so clever. Fine, what-you-are-thinking-of-as-you exists in dependence on a form birthed from a woman. There.

[Anonymous No.18903179]

>>18902732
>western thinkers
>not nihilistic bullshit
Oh no... don't tell him

[Anonymous No.18903185]

>>18903171
Got any more sophomoric takes to share, crypto-physicalist?
>>18903179
>n-n-no I'm not a nihilist, everyone else is
Start with the Cope and Seethe Sutra.

[Anonymous No.18903215]

>>18903185
>believing in a permanent eternal personality isn't a sophomoric take

[Anonymous No.18903315]

>>18903171
>Fine, what-you-are-thinking-of-as-you exists in dependence on a form birthed from a woman.
Says who? That’s only true of beings who identify themselves as being their physical body or things dependent on it. Not everyone does this though.

[Anonymous No.18903334]

Buddhism has already been DEBUNKED by the hindus

[Anonymous No.18903371]

>>18903315
Wherever else you decide to locate a personal self it cannot be shown to be permanent either
>>18903334
Buddhism lives rent free in India to this day. Buddhists spend no time arguing about Hinduism outside of /lit/ while every Hindu treatise is totally brahmin-broken and spends a significant portion of its text strawmanning Buddhism