/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5659862]

You have as long as you'd like to explain why you aren't Buddhist.

[Anonymous No.5659890]

Ok

[Anonymous No.5659904]

I don't have time for a conversion at the moment.

[Anonymous No.5659910]

Because I like more the stoics, since i'm westerner and asian are a bunch of racists idiots.

[Anonymous No.5659911]

>>5659862
I'm not a cunt lol

[Anonymous No.5659916]

I'm too caught up in getting drunk every night and smoking cigarettes all day to restart my meditation practice.

[Anonymous No.5659917]

I don't know enough about Buddhism.
I'm also not particularly interested in learning about it.

[Anonymous No.5659965]

>don't even believe in what I say
Sure thing Gautama

[Anonymous No.5659990]

I want to start meditating but I find it's difficult to get into the habit

Does anyone have any tips?

[Anonymous No.5659992]

>>5659990
Stop avoiding it

[Anonymous No.5660046]

>>5659990
Watch Alan Watts - The Art of Meditation on YouTube. His manner of translating clearly without adhering to the cliché spiritualism really helps you get a beginners grasp of the subject. I tend to spend around a half hour each day in the lotus posture, no music or incense or anything of the sort to aid me - it's a mere relaxation technique but you will understand after so long just why people connect it to "enlightenment" and "spirituality". You feel more awake, more concise and more energised.

I've only been practising meditation for a few months.

[Anonymous No.5660073]

>>5659862
Because there is no logical reason to believe in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul, or that if I fail act according to karma I will be reincarnated as a goat or that some other bad thing will happen to me after I am somehow rebirthed into the world.

[Anonymous No.5660224]

>>5659862
Buddhism is counter-revolutionary and urges people to accept their oppression and to keep serving the rich. It's a slave religion like stoicism is a slave philosophy.

>i-i'm inwardly free though i c-can be free even as a slave

No.

[Anonymous No.5660228]

>>5659990
>Wake up and meditate for 15 minutes
>Meditate for 15 mins before sleep

It'll form a habit.

[Anonymous No.5660290]

>>5660224
Stoicism contains revolutionary character/seeds if you consider its focus is on liberating the mind from the irrational and the ideological. Stoicism is how the individual slave survives (intellectually) his condition.
>there has never been a violent revolution from lower caste/class stoics so enlightened by apatheia they decide they decided they must impose the dictatorship of the philosopher peasant

[Anonymous No.5660302]

>>5660073
>buddhism
>reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul

[Anonymous No.5660306]

>>5660073
This. I totally get the four noble truths and all that, but the eightfold path seems just a way to control a population and make them okay with their shitty lives. Why not kill if life is suffering?

[Anonymous No.5660312]

>>5660302
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirth_(Buddhism)

[Anonymous No.5660318]

>>5660312
Wow, an anon that thinks a wiki link that he hasn't even read is going to make him win an argument. Never seen this one before.

[Anonymous No.5660323]

>>5660302
Are you denying that the only way to avoid coming back is Nirvana? According to Buddhist belief, without the reincarnation stuff, suicide should be the perfect answer.

[Anonymous No.5660334]

>>5660306
Because killing sure as hell wouldn't be mercy. Life can be shitty, but on the by and large it's pretty amazing. Living things in general seem to agree on this, expressed by the deepest instinct to survive.

They teach contentment because extravagance and instant gratification are poisonous. Would your life really be that much different and better if you had everything you wanted? How would that affect your character?

[Anonymous No.5660338]

>>5659862
Even my suffering is precious to me.

[Anonymous No.5660339]

>>5660306
Because then everyone just gets reincarnated anyway unless they've escaped the cycle of samsara. After that, one major branch of Buddhism holds that you simply reincarnate into another plane of existence and continue on there until you eventually stop reincarnated. The other major branch holds that after escaping the cycle you simply stop reincarnating.

>>5660318
He's right though, the idea of rebirth is an integral part of Buddhism. The other guy should probably read that wikipedia article if he really thinks that Buddhism doesn't involve reincarnation or rebirth, because that is a big and fundamental mistake. Although, it seems very common among Westerners looking for some kind of vague spirituality to grasp onto.

[Anonymous No.5660343]

>>5659911
This is also my answer

[Anonymous No.5660347]

>>5659862
Because trendy white kid pop orientalist pseudo-Buddhist hipsters have ruined Buddhism for Westerners.

These idiots know nothing about Buddhism, they've only picked up on the religion because they're shallow and superficial and they like to adapt ideologies as frivolously as they choose the most fashionable items of clothing to wear.

[Anonymous No.5660350]

>>5660323
>According to Buddhist belief
Which you know nothing of, so why are you commenting on what Buddhism teaches?

Rebirth=/=reincarnation. There is no atman in Buddhism. Suicide qua suicide would not awaken you: it would not lead to the secession of consciousness.

[Anonymous No.5660362]

>>5660334
Not all living things clung to life. You know what happened to the creatures that didn't really fear death, or had a low inclination to fuck/reproduce?

They died and didn't reproduce. Life likes life because liking life leads to more life. This isn't hard to understand.

Who says killing isn't mercy? What if you killed people by sedative and painkiller? Merciful compared to any alternative death.

Life is fucking garbage. You always crave things. Food, water, sex, itches, pains, sleep, companionship - everything. It is so you have the incentive to continue doing things that make you and your offspring live. Not usually pleasurable at all. Just endless desire and dissatisfaction.

[Anonymous No.5660386]

>>5660312
>>5660339
>>5660350
There is a fuckload of evidence that life is suffering, unsatisfactory, whatever you want to call it.

Where is the evidence that if I behave a certain way, I won't be reborn? What does the fucking universe care about some arbitrary rules?

[Anonymous No.5660387]

>>5660339
>The instinct to survive is somehow a conscious statement on the quality of life
No, it's not.

[Anonymous No.5660390]

>>5660339
see
>>5660350

There is no unique self in Buddhism. Reincarnation is an orthodox Hindu belief. Buddhism specifically argues that the immortal soul does not exist. There is no transmigration of souls because there aren't souls to begin with. What is being reborn is -consciousness- and -its ignorance and suffering from ignorance-.

[Anonymous No.5660392]

>>5660387
Whoops, meant to quote >>5660334

[Anonymous No.5660405]

>>5660390
Reincarnation does not imply a unique immortal soul. It implies a new life in a new body, not the same life in a new body. Please, try to avoid being pedantic. The original point still stands: there is no logical proof that rebirth is something which actually occurs and forms a continuum of consciousness or some such thing, and that good karma will lead to a "happier" rebirth and bad karma to an "unhappy" one.

[Anonymous No.5660409]

>>5660386
>Where is the evidence that if I behave a certain way, I won't be reborn?
>>5660350 here
I'm not a Buddhist, I'm just explaining what Buddhism actually is. There is no evidence, but how could there be evidence? You can take the Buddha's word as evidence if it makes sense to you. It's a religion, after all.

[Anonymous No.5660415]

>>5660390
Okay, that helps a bit. But please answer this >>5660386

Read the list. Sexual Misconduct, Malicious Speech, Rough Speech, Frivolous Talk?

These sure have a lot to do with stopping "my" consciousness from coming back and doing this shit again and again and again.

Sorry if I seem hostile but I want to suicide and be DONE with this. But Buddhism makes me doubt that that will actually end it.

[Anonymous No.5660420]

What id a Buddhist?

[Anonymous No.5660423]

>>5660405
mój czarnuch...

[Anonymous No.5660440]

>>5660405
>Reincarnation does not imply a unique immortal soul.
It definitely does, and the term reincarnation has that meaning in Indian religion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation#Buddhism
http://www.buddhanet.net/funbud10.htm

[Anonymous No.5660450]

>>5660440
The definition itself does not have that implication. It includes religions that hold that one has the same, unique soul, and those that do not hold that belief. Stop being so pedantic, it's not a good defense.
>"Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body."

[Anonymous No.5660463]

>>5660423
Pierdol się cwelu xD

[Anonymous No.5660471]

>>5660415
You don't remember being born, you may not even remember last friday clearly, so what makes you think your current phenomenon of consciousness won't persist past this life? In fact you're going through a constant process of rebirth every day, and every day the thing you call yourself is losing some qualities and gaining others. In reality (according to Buddhism anyway) your perception of this unity is incorrect but it's so profoundly powerful that even though you might off yourself (or die naturally) your consciousness (not to be confused with mind, soul, spirit, or any persistent thing you identify as yourself) is going to persist since it's weighed down by the actions you took in this current life. The next life (consciousness) isn't you (because there is no 'you') but it'll probably be worse off because you didn't bother removing from your consciousness the errors of thought (karma). The only 'proof' of this is the Buddha, since he supposedly became enlightened and attained Nirvana (which is the state you desire from suicide but can't be attained from it).

[Anonymous No.5660489]

>>5660450
It has nothing to do with being pedantic, it has to do with being in a discussion about Buddhism talking about its own ideas. This is how Buddhism developed. Other Indu groups were talking about ideas about life and death. Reincarnation was one of them and became the orthodox belief. Buddhism very specifically argues that this belief is wrong and offered an alternative, which is different in nature. Using them interchangeably creates incorrect ideas.

[Anonymous No.5660667]

>>5659990
observe why you are resisting meditation and your doin it

[Anonymous No.5660673]

>>5659862
I am a not a Buddhist because there is nothing to be Buddhist. But goddamn I'm trying pretty hard.

[Anonymous No.5660753]

>>5660471
He was right about the 4 truths. There is a lingering in my mind that if I kill myself, he would be right about samsara too.

[Anonymous No.5660773]

[Anonymous No.5660800]

>>5660773
How do you do that?

[Anonymous No.5660829]

>>5660800
                                                                                                                newfag

[Anonymous No.5660876]

Because the goddess Eris found me and saved me from order.

[Anonymous No.5660915]

>>5659862
because I like jacking off and drinking beer, now get off my case op

[Anonymous No.5660952]

>>5660876
Have you recited the turkey curse recently?

"Greyface existed and had followers who he encouraged to "Look at all the order around you", and he somehow convinced mankind to agree with his ideas about Serious Order. It is something of a mystery why Greyface gained so many followers when anyone could have looked at all of the disorder in the world.

Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and were known even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own.

The Turkey Curse revealed by the Apostle Dr. Van Van Mojo is designed to counteract destructive order. It derives its name from the fact that the incantation resembles the sounds of a turkey."

[Sallad !imYooNAJm. No.5660956]

Because I am a patriot and Buddhism is foreign and should not be imported into my country.

[Anonymous No.5660978]

being a buddhist is a waste of time, try being a buddha

[Anonymous No.5660979]

>>5660224
>encourages radical and institutionalized rejection of society and dropping out of the system in mass in favor of creating an entirely different social system

>counter-revolutionary and urging people to accept their oppression and to "keep serving the rich"


Pick one (tip:the latter isn't Buddhism).

Can you find me the sutta/sutra that talks about serving the rich, or accepting their oppression?

[Anonymous No.5660988]

>>5660323
That simply isn't true and you have no basis in Buddhism for such an assertion. If rebirth is untrue than Buddhism asserts that death merely leads to nirodha-sampatti, which is NOT nirvana. Nirvana is nirodha-dukha.

In short the Buddhist position is that if rebirth isn't true than the best thing to do is live as long as one can in nirodha-dukha before one dies.


By the way, I sincerely doubt you know very much about Buddhism, since you speak about Nirvana and death having anything to do with one another. In other words you seem to be confusing nirvana and parinirvana, which are very different.

[Anonymous No.5660999]

>>5660347
Thanks post-modernism.

" “…an end of realism, the end of a belief in absolutes, the end of belief that the world is ready made to be our home, with all the rules to be kept already laid down and built in. People are becoming de-traditionalised, nomadised, casualized, as the old fixed points of reference disappear — Instead of marriage a series of relationships, instead of a home, a series of addresses, instead of a career, freelancing, instead of belief, whatever one is currently “into” ,instead of stable identities , pluralism and flux; instead of society, the market and one’s own circle."

"Culture seems to have become all fringe and no mainstream. Popular beliefs multiply exceedingly; but it’s all a fad. None of it is to be taken seriously, because it is not clear that anything is, or can be taken seriously anymore."

"There is a complete break with the past along with the rapid movement of capital, people and ideas around the world. There is a pervasive sense of groundlessness and outsidelessness. “Is that all there is? You mean this is it?” This loss is becoming so complete so quickly that very soon historians will find it very difficult to re-imagine what it was like to genuinely believe in something"

"“In the old consciousness, identity was something metaphysical — now it increasingly has become simply a corporate ID — not a substance but a sign. Reality itself has become only an effect , something conjured up within and by the motion of signs. The line between drama and documentary,reality and fiction has become blurred.”

-Don Cupitt.

[Anonymous No.5661000]

>>5660386
>What does the fucking universe care about some arbitrary rules?

Buddhists don't think it does. That is why escaping the process is considered to be going against the stream and taken to be a big deal.

[Anonymous No.5661006]

>>5660450
The distinction is important, Buddhism rejects "soul" or "spirit".

[Anonymous No.5661012]

>>5660224
Do you care in explaining what you consider a revolutionary or radical social movement then?

What is more radical than the institutionalized dropping out of society?


Furthermore how you explain the Tibetan's response to the Chinese entering in force? They rioted and protested and forced gorilla movements (with the backing of the religious leaders) and many fled. To me those all seem like the exact opposite of just accepting their oppression.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5661020]

>>5661012
btw, google slavery under the lamas in tibet
or don't because it's horrifying

chinese brought them a lot of good...

[Anonymous No.5661024]

>>5660224
What about the kalichakra tantras that talk about making weapons and using them to defend against and kill the barbarians (which were clearly the muslims as the texts speak of how they dress their woman in sheets from head to toe)?

The or what about the mentioning if how the peaceful methods don't work, that for the sake of all sentient beings, the forceful methods would be employed?

How does that not directly refute your notion of accepting being a slave or being overrun for the sake of being inwardly free. It gives step by step instructions on how to make and use weapons of war to kill barbarians who are an existential threat. It is justified with the idea that destroying the teachings of the dharma is a much greater harm to all sentient beings than killing murderous thugs.


Also the original monastic Sanga that the Buddha set up specifically did not accumulate any money in anyway... which would mean as the sangha grows more and more tax money is sapped from the government/ruling class. The whole thing is a giant protest to hierarchical society and monetary classes.

[Anonymous No.5661035]

>>5661020
I am pretty versed in Tibetan feudalism and it really wasn't horrifying. Feudalism also liberates people from the traditional right to use the land, amongst other things. It isn't all good or all bad.

If you actually studied Tibetan culture you would see a strong sense of individuality that extended to all, and all were free to do pretty much as they pleased. On top of that each family usually had a member in the monastic community and anyone from any family could be taken to be a reincarnation, so in many respects the dynamic was far more counter classist than just about any other society.

Again, you can claim it was good for the Tibetans, but they sure were not happy about the invasion, as mentioned they revolted in mass. The Dalai Lama mentions himself that there certainly no utopia before the Chinese invasion and that many many things needed to change for the better, but that he wished the Tibetan people could do that on their own terms.

I personally reject that the Chinese did the Tibetans a lot of good. The han chinese have completely usurped Tibet and Tibetans are entirely marginalized in just about every way. Over a hundred people over the last 2 years setting themselves on fire in protest of the Chinese isn't exactly an indication that they are happy with what they consider to be an occupation.

History is written by the winners though, so enjoy your PLA sponsored views.

[Anonymous No.5661042]

>>5661020
>>5661035

Middle way guys:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy

What is clear is that it isn't very clear.

[Anonymous No.5661054]

>>5661035
Sorry I am drunk, tired, and distracted:

I obviously meant to say that liberation from Feudalism also liberates people from the traditional right yada yada

I am really sorry.

[Anonymous No.5661055]

Nihilist schlock.

[Anonymous No.5661157]

>>5660224
Read Gary Snyder's "Buddhist Anarchism", and look up Engaged Buddhism
You can be a buddhist and a revolutionary

[Anonymous No.5661427]

Because Kierkegaard was based as fuck and existentialism doesn't jive very well with Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.5661756]

>>5660334
Surely you're not retarded enough to believe that not committing suicide is in every case some sort of affirmation and a choice on the same level as what should I eat for breakfast? If eliminating oneself instantly, painlessly with 100% certainty there sure as shit wouldn't be 7 billion of us walking around between fulfilling desire a and desire b.

[Anonymous No.5661759]

>>5661756
100% were possible*

[Anonymous No.5661798]

>>5660979
>buddhist in charge of not sucking the cock of whichever king lets them have their fancy monasteries
>hitching a ride with the ruling classes for centuries
>surprised they get fucked when the people get power and realise you don't reincarnate as an ant because you didn't give enough food to the monks

Clergy, not even once.

[Anonymous No.5661812]

>>5661012
>Do you care in explaining what you consider a revolutionary or radical social movement then?
Doing away with the oppressive system, not merely fleeing it partly.

>What is more radical than the institutionalized dropping out of society?
Buddhist monks don't tend to drop out of society, they tend to depend on society for donations. Most monestaries are far from self sufficient, they need the laymen as their host to feed upon.

>Furthermore how you explain the Tibetan's response to the Chinese entering in force? They rioted and protested and forced gorilla movements (with the backing of the religious leaders) and many fled. To me those all seem like the exact opposite of just accepting their oppression.
Same reason you have dirt poor proles defending the Church and the pope. They cling to the theocracy that pulls the wool over their eyes.

>>5661024
They may have been willing to defend themselves from external threats but not from internal ones. In reality the monks are almost always in bed with the ruling classes and became a priestly cast rather than something opposed to hierarchy.

>>5661157
I'm sure they can be combined in a way, but for most of history Buddhism has had an interest in maintaining the status quo once they've set up their wall gazing clubhouses.

[Anonymous No.5661815]

>>5659862
Some things in Buddhism I like and agree with, and its attitude towards life and death is useful for some people and at certain stages of one's life, but ultimately I've moved past it because of my passions.

[Anonymous No.5661826]

>>5659862
Because Hinduism believes in principled action, which is far better than principled non action

[Anonymous No.5661828]

I admire and live by a lot of Buddhist ideas and practices but not because I want to, just because they seem like the right thing to do.

I'd never call myself a Buddhist because it has too many negative connotations but I don't believe in the religious side of it, just the "don't be a self-centred, materialistic shithead" side of it.

[Anonymous No.5661952]

>>5661828
>not because I want to, just because they seem like the right thing to do.
Literally the same thing. Or do you have some magical external standard by which to justify your arbitrary preferences?