/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6781894]

I don't understand - why do people take it for granted that ego is an illusion?

Also, slightly related, can someone please explain me the gits of Buddhism?

[Anonymous No.6781895]

>>6781894
Buddhism is stoicism with spooky ghosts.

[Anonymous No.6781934]

>>6781895
where are the ghosts

[Anonymous No.6781948]

>>6781934
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrathful_deities

[Anonymous No.6782006]

First you ought to know that an illusion is not the same as a lie. An illusion is something that is definitely perceived and is part of your reality because of it. To call it an illusion does not mean to deny it.

What Buddhism (and other religions, thinkers, etc) seeks to highlight is that there is no immutable essence to things, it is not eternal, it is not all there is to it and you can not define it with precision. Who are you? You are not exactly your name, your job or your physical appearance, even though, at the same time, they are relatively you. If you think you are your job, then changing your job would make you not you, right? But then you change jobs and you are still you, so what is left to be called you? What those who say the ego is an illusion points out is that there is nothing "left", no center or core that is you. You are these changes, these attitudes and so on.

Buddhism is about the ideas of Prince Siddharta who lived half a millenium before Christ. He left his palace to understand the world and find a way to cease suffering, all that is bitter, undesirable, painful, all that we avoid but nevertheless fall towards. The interpretations of it vary, there are several schools of thought and also a geographical development as well as his ideas spread to south east asia, to China, Japan, etc. His teachings were memorized and spoken in "sutras" by his students, later written down and recorded. You can check them if you are more interested.

Some of the most important teachings are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
And so on. But it is huge, so there is plenty of material for you to look. It is also not an intellectual pursuit, but involves practice, not only several meditation techniques, chanting and rituals depending on the school, but also a practice that involves everyday acts.

I think one of the most important aspects of Buddhism is Pratyasamutpada, or dependent origination, because it doesn't a center on the world, but rather talks about how our state of mind is linked to our surroundings and how they are linked to our attitudes and so on. Buddhism has a lot to do with taking responsibility for your doing and dismantling things that we take for certain but that are just relative and small if you really pay attention to it. So to get back to the example, if you think you are your job and you lose the job, you might suffer a lot, as if you've died, but later you'll see that's not it and there is plenty of other things you could do

[Anonymous No.6782026]

>>6782006
I wrote that pretty fast, sorry for the bizarre structure of my sentences and missed words

[Anonymous No.6782073]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4_75nT6_M

[Anonymous No.6782085]

>>6782006
>An illusion is something that is definitely perceived and is part of your reality because of it
so what makes it an illusion?

[Anonymous No.6782148]

>>6782085
The illusion is to think there is some essence to it.

Say, for example, that you hear a noise late at night and you think someone entered your home. You get up all worried thinking all that you could do and all that could happen to you if the man fucks you up, so you grab a bat and stay next to the door for five minutes. Later you break the silence and check to see what it is only to find your cat messing up with some stuff. The illusion was that there was a man inside your home, but the noise was very much real. Buddhism points out to how we jump from one thought to another (noise - > someone inside), how clinging to it brings us suffering (all of that tension), and how that thought depends on everything else (how safe is your home, if you were ever robbed before, literally everything else).

The illusion is to take the noise for something else. But the noise is real. The catch is to understand that "reality is an illusion". That is, not that reality is fake or that there is some reality more real than this one (far from it), but in understanding that reality is precisely this game of perception, of action and reaction, of noises and memories and attitudes.

[Anonymous No.6782211]

>>6782148
so with your example - what if the man deduced from the noise that a cat must've made the noise - then his reality is not an illusion, is it? are you just saying that men in general are prone to perceive reality wrong, or that reality is inherently an illusion?

[Anonymous No.6782217]

>>6782148
>essence
What does essence mean? (srs question)

[Anonymous No.6782223]

>>6782006
>What those who say the ego is an illusion points out is that there is nothing "left", no center or core that is you. You are these changes, these attitudes and so on.
Can't the ego imply a mutable self?

[Anonymous No.6782249]

>>6782217
>What does essence mean? (srs question)

It's a metaphysical property that is intrinsically tied to the object or event you perceive. For example, look at the objects around you: there may be a bed, a table, a phone, a door, etc. For each of these you could say there is an intrinsic essence, 'table-ness' and 'door-ness'. Buddhism and contemporary philosophy reject the existence of an essence and say 'table-ness' is a linguistic concept that humans have created and superimposed over the material.

This James Franco meme image articulates it quite well.

[Anonymous No.6782258]

>>6782006
>. It is also not an intellectual pursuit
Why is it not an intellectual pursuit? Are the teachings not rooted in some sorts of logic?

> but involves practice, not only several meditation techniques, chanting and rituals depending on the school, but also a practice that involves everyday acts.
Are there no buddhist schools that don't involve this kind of active commitment (chanting, rituals, practice) but only a silent agreement with their system of thoughts?

[Anonymous No.6782263]

>>6782217
The elements that are necessary to the thing they compose. Hence the term "essential to"

[Anonymous No.6782275]

>>6782211
No, it's not that people perceive it the wrong way. It doesn't matter if it is a cat or a burglar, the point is to observe how you react to the noise as if it was something other than just a noise. You assume certain things. This is natural and it doesn't mean that you should be unmoved by a noise (it might as well be a burglar afterall). But to put it in more practical examples, it weights on us much more when we take childish assumptions (literally from our childhood) into adult life, or when we are so deep into a relationship we can't imagine our life outside of it, or when you get hold to an opinion as if admitting yourself to be wrong and changing your mind would be the same as to die. All of this involves clinging and believing "this is it!". We do a lot of bad things out of fear, or out of anxiety, seeking to protect something that is not tangible at all.

Reality must be an illusion, because we are not really dealing with cats and burglars, but with noise. That is, we are dealing with what we see and hear and get in contact with and this contact is in itself an interpretation. You cannot look at a fact and not interpret it while you do it. Dependent origination is (amongst other things) the realization that these things that occur to us depend on how we see them and by what we do and that what we do and how we see them depends on what happends to us. Some people think Buddhism is saying "it's all in your head", but what is really saying is that "it's not outside of your head", that is, there is no outside/inside, they come together.

>>6782217
An essence is like thinking there is some deep truth about something that is static and cannot change. If all you know are black dogs, you may think being black is essential to being a dog, until you see a brown dog. To think beyond essence is to understand that there is nothing static or immutable or absolute about anything. The dictionary defines words with other words. Nothing is set in stone, so to speak. Including yourself.

[Anonymous No.6782317]

>>6782275
>To think beyond essence is to understand that there is nothing static or immutable or absolute about anything
But people can differentiate a dog from a cat, so there must be some dog-ness that defines the dog (an essence) even if it's ill-defined, no?

[Anonymous No.6782350]

>>6782223
It is mutable, but then you put this other word "self" here, as if the ego was the part of the self that is mutable. You put the essence somewhere else, you see? As said, the doing and the changes itself are the ego and to say the ego is an illusion doesn't mean to deny it, but to make you aware that those things which you think are deeply you, necessary for you to be you, are not really necessary, essencial or static.

It's worth mentioning that words like ego and self and I are not present in Buddhism scriptures, there are other terms and other relationships being made. The concept of an ego is itself very malleable and different psychanalysts will have different defintions for it, self-help books use it all the time in different ways, and so on.

>>6782258
There is an intellectual aspect to it, of course, but not solely that's what I mean. Because Buddhism doesn't see the mind and the body and our attitudes and our environment to be independent from each other. That's why it is not a matter of understanding things rationally and logically, because you are an emotional being, you are an active being, there are many sides to yourself that you can work to understand this, including how you deal with your health, with your responsibilities, with the people you love and so on. A lot of the understanding is there, not in verbal arguments or logic.

That's why you're going to hear stories like that of the monk that asks his master for an enlightening teaching. The master says "have you finished your meal?", "yes", says the monk, "then go wash your bowl" and this way he was enlightened. Because really, washing the dishes is accomplishing a lot and engaging yourself with this sort of work and paying full attention to it can really teach you more than a lot of reading.

The definition of what constitutes a buddhism school is also not clear. Some people call themselves buddhists without ever doing that. Some people criticize that people. I personally think meditation is a specially important practice. You can think of it in the sense that to be around other people and to get in touch with thangka paintings (which are there to teach and show you the teachings of Buddha), if you wake up to live it and go sleep with it in mind, the more you'll get it. That is, there is no reason to avoid it.

>silent agreement
In that I do not believe. You cannot be silent about it, it will show itself in your attitude. If that means you have to cut your hair, I don't know, but to sit in your room and say "huh, I agree with that" means nothing...

[Anonymous No.6782354]

>>6782317
>But people can differentiate a dog from a cat, so there must be some dog-ness that defines the dog (an essence) even if it's ill-defined, no?
A geneticist takes the DNA from a pure breed Labrador and a Siamese cat. He creates 98 intermediary states and lines them up in order with dog on the left and cat on the right. You slowly progress down the 100 animals, looking carefully at each one. You tag the first 10 as dogs. As you approach the next 10 you become unsure, but still apply 'dogness', and by the time you hit the middle ones you scratch your head and realize that the concept of "dogness" was never inherent in the animal, but a semantic label applied by you.

[Anonymous No.6782388]

>>6782317
Not really and this is a problem with words that many thinkers pointed out.

When you say the word "dog", what is that which you are evoking? Where is this dog? Is it that dog or that other dog? It is not pointing to anything specifically. Each dog has its individual characteristics that makes it unique and our head jumps from one to other to create an average image of it. Don't you agree that all dogs have four legs? There are no breeds of dogs with two or three legs. However, a dog can lose a leg and we still call it a dog. Why? Because we understand the event of the amputation as transitory, but the essence to remain.

In truth, it's not that there are characteristics that are common to all things x that makes us call them x, but rather we create our concepts to embrace all the differences within. So that we can say "dog" without specifying between a pug and a pitbull. We define things by what they are not. We only call cats and dogs by different names because we perceive their difference, not because all cats are alike and all dogs are alike. The point is: everything is unique, there is always this difference. Our concepts normalize the difference, they serve to point that the difference is not important to us.

Remember in Blade Runner when the guy talks with the robot "you are in a desert..." and the robot interrupts: "which desert?" and the guy says "it doesn't matter, it's hypothetical". That's the point.

This video explains better than I can and it also has a dog example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHNrp-bf-KI

[Anonymous No.6782409]

>>6782275
>No, it's not that people perceive it the wrong way. It doesn't matter if it is a cat or a burglar, the point is to observe how you react to the noise as if it was something other than just a noise. You assume certain things. This is natural and it doesn't mean that you should be unmoved by a noise (it might as well be a burglar afterall). But to put it in more practical examples, it weights on us much more when we take childish assumptions (literally from our childhood) into adult life, or when we are so deep into a relationship we can't imagine our life outside of it, or when you get hold to an opinion as if admitting yourself to be wrong and changing your mind would be the same as to die. All of this involves clinging and believing "this is it!". We do a lot of bad things out of fear, or out of anxiety, seeking to protect something that is not tangible at all.

>Reality must be an illusion, because we are not really dealing with cats and burglars, but with noise

I think I sort of understand what you're saying, but I don't really follow the conlusion. The only thing I can deduce is that our *perception* of reality is an illusion, while reality itself is not. I'm not trying to be obtuse, I'm just trying to understand these things, so sorry for asking so much

[Anonymous No.6782439]

>>6782350
Out of curiosity - are you studying philosophy? Are you a Buddhist yourself?

[Anonymous No.6782487]

>>6782006
>What Buddhism (and other religions, thinkers, etc) seeks to highlight is that there is no immutable essence to things, it is not eternal, it is not all there is to it and you can not define it with precision.

Is this what Buddhism is though? I heard someone saying "For me it's always been centered around one thing - The idea that there is form of happiness that isn't contingent upon anything." which makes sense and I see the connection with what you said, but they're not one and the same thing. Reading all these just makes me feel I still don't understand what's Buddhism. Can someone shed some light please?

[Anonymous No.6782495]

why are buddhists praying?

[Anonymous No.6782509]

>>6782409
I understand your concern and your position is not at all strange, for we live in a specific time with specific values that sees a clear distincition between an inside mental world and an outside physical world of objects. Western religion, science, our cultural products, it brings that out a lot.

To put it in order terms, followed by your way of putting it, I could say reality is our perception.

Something that is real is something that has an effect, it is significant in some way or other. Can you think of something that cannot be thought? What if I told you there is something invisible, absolutely silent, that you cannot perceive through any means, can you say that this something exists at all? The difference between being there and not being there depends on this relationship of perception. A cat may be silent, a burglar can rob your house without making a noise, but in any of those cases, you wouldn't even wake up to think of it. What you consider as an outside world is really that which you perceive to be outside of yourself. This is not restricted to the physical world, but I'm talking about other people, other times, other opinions, anything that is "other".

What if your perception is mistaken, but reality is solid. How could you ever verify reality to be solid if not from your perception? How could you ever begin thinking reality as something rigid and true if not by, you know, thinking about it?

[Anonymous No.6782547]

>>6782439
I study philosophy if that means I'm constantly reading and talking about these things. I don't consider myself a Buddhist because I never commited to practice it straight forward, even though it has influenced me greatly on the way I live.

>>6782487
There are many sides to it, I brought forth the way I see it and in particular the point that concerns OP's first question. I like that definition you pointed out.

Buddhism can be about the cessation of suffering, but also about the search for happiness, but also about an inquiry on the nature of reality, but also about how should one live life. It talks about all those things. It is also rooted in a lot of older philosophies from India, so if you look at mythology behind the deities and concepts of the old sages, you'll see a lot of parallels. Any of those paths can help you understand Buddhism. I recommend you reading History of Buddhist Philosophy by Kalupahana.

Also check this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4s-OvHfXVg

>>6782495
Buddhists prayer is an act in itself. They use mantras and malas and recite the teachings of Buddha and meditate in a lot of ways so that they can reinforce what they learn and be more and more in tune with it all. They understand that good knowledge and good action don't come in a single moment, and so you must remind yourself, practice it, think about it, live it. Just like washing the dishes everyday can make you more responsible at your job, and watering plants can make you more kind to other people. Prayer makes you aware of where you are in the world, it is a break for you to center on yourself and act with more attention.

[Anonymous No.6782564]

>>6782509
>To put it in order terms, followed by your way of putting it, I could say reality is our perception.
This is where I have problems agreeing. To me, there is a difference between the reality itself, and our perception of reality, regardless of how you label those 2. If the planet is round, and you think it's flat, there's still a reality where the planet is round - the physical reality. If everyone thinks the world is flat, the world is still not flat because there's the physical reality where it simply isn't flat.

Do you not agree there's a difference between those?

[Anonymous No.6782591]

>>6782547
>but also about an inquiry on the nature of reality, but also about how should one live life
Could you please elaborate on these 2? Where does my inquiry on the nature of reality meets Buddhism? A lot of people that don't identify themselves as Buddhists question reality, where's the line drawn?

[Anonymous No.6782613]

>>6782547
>Prayer makes you aware of where you are in the world, it is a break for you to center on yourself and act with more attention.
I probably sound like an obvious intruder, but do these things have any research backing them up, or is it more of a "mm, that sounds reasonable, yeah" kind of process?

Also, on this note, how does Buddhism relate to science and maybe scientism? Are they compatible in any way?

[Anonymous No.6782765]

>>6782591
A lot of people talk about reality, sure. That is ontology. What I meant is that Buddhism also has its ontological ideas (and there are several), it has an epistemological side, it has a moral side, etc. Just like other religions, just like certain philosophers talk about those various things.

What I talked about dependent origination is an aspect of Buddhist ontology.

>>6782613
What do you mean by research? You know, on the matter that you're bringing, I think it is important to pay attention to what are the standards that we are using to measure other things, because from there reveals our ideology and our biases, and that which we take as essential and fundamental. A Christian may look at a scientific practice and say "this is good, but is God backing this up or are you just doing it?", which reveals that the priority and the loyalty of that person is with Christ and God, not with science. In the same way, some people use science in the way we understand it today to validate all else. This is a form of loyalty. New information will be disregarded if it doesn't meet the initial standards, rather than have the standards to change along with it.

Some part of it is due to tradition. These practices are thousands and thousands of years old. Another part of it is backed up by a hollistic view of the life of those who practice it, that is, to observe how it changes the way they think, feel and live their world. That's how you look at the wise man and sees him as a wise man and trust him to be a good teacher. You want to know how to live the way he lives. But I think the most important of all is that it is based on our personal life, on the emergence of problems we cannot solve by other means, in the observation that the practice does good to us as we do it and so on. Isn't that the ultimate palpable tool that we have to decide what we do? It is said that Buddhism doesn't have commandments, but vows.

At the same time, yes, there are scientific researches that say that prayer does good to the brain, that meditation makes you calm and healthy and etc... But I'm critic of those because at the same time that it seeks to judge buddhist practice, it also interprets it and translates it to its terms and misses great part of it. You don't meditate in order to have a healthy body, because that is making of it a task with a limited end.

I think Dalai Lama once said that if science proved there was no afterlife, he would have accepted it. This made a lot of scientific minded people soft to buddhism. But specifically considering scientism as a criticism of science, scietism is the compromising of a simple thing: "whatever it is it is", in favour of a purely scientific view, as if they were equal. Siddharta set himself to break all the chains that kept him from seeing that "whatever is, is". In that sense, Buddhism is also concerned with adapting itself to things and not the other way around. Science also takes that vow, but both have problems.

[Anonymous No.6782813]

>>6782564
There are things we don't know that we don't know. I understand your reasoning, I myself had that opinion for the longest time, but what made me change my mind was to think that we only differ between one thing or the other (a false and a true one, for example) the moment we perceive them.

If the whole world thought the planet was flat was because, in someway or other, a round or a flat planet wouldn't make a difference to these people. How do you know there is still this reality of the round planet if you never looked for it?

The old question "does a falling tree make a sound if no one is there to hear it?" is relevant here. What we know is that if does or doesn't make a sound, there is no difference, no one heard it, no one was affected by it. But then we are inclined to think that it does make a sound, afterall, we know from memory of other trees that we take for reference that trees make a sound when they fall. But if we take this knowledge out, if we clean our mind from taking in information from other sources and just look at the dead fallen tree, there is no sound. There might have been waves in the air and a fallen log, but what does that matter, to you, by all means, it is silent.

It is real when it has an effect. We don't know what is, but we can observe the effects. If you let go of a rock, it will fall and people understood this without ever thinking on why it does it. If I believe your cold is caused by a demon that hates garlic, ginger and lemon tea and that hates to rest in bed all day, then by all means, I'll cure your cold and have that demon expelled. What changes is the image I have of it, but the reality is in the effects. If the Earth is flat or round, to a lot of people, what really matters is that the sun goes up and goes down everyday.

[Anonymous No.6782905]

>>6782765
>has its ontological ideas (and there are several), it has an epistemological side, it has a moral side
I find this very interesting. It makes me think that maybe I do have an interest in religions if they all have their own ontological/epistemological/moral sides. Where would one find Buddhisms thoughts on all these sides? Can you still be a Buddhist if for example you reject the moral side of it? What's the moral side of Buddhism anyway, do they define good/bad/etc?

[Anonymous No.6782989]

>>6782905
Look at it beyond essence. Before, you may probably twist your nose to it because it is a religion (like I did many years ago). But what does that even mean? In the same way, you ask if you "can still be a buddhist if...", though this implies there is an essential way to be a buddhist. Who is to draw the line? It doesn't matter if it is buddhist or not or how you call yourself, jump right in without concessions.

Your question is far too big for me to answer. You'll have to look for it yourself. I got into Buddhism through Alan Watts and from my studies of eastern art. I recommend you to look at Watts videos, particularly the series Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life, though it talks about other things rather than buddhism, he has a great way of explaining things and might get you hooked on it. Read the Dharmapada. Also look for Maddhyamaka from Nagarjuna, a very interesting read.

I cannot stress how huge Buddhism is. Once you get into it, a bunch of new questions will arise.

>>6782613
By the way, I found this on your questions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4s-OvHfXVg

[Anonymous No.6783060]

>>6782249
>but poetry anon? Is that "language"?

[Anonymous No.6783169]

>reading about Buddishm on Wikipedia
>clicking on all the links about deity's

That shit gets complex.

All these deity's are connected, then you end up on some page where the deity is listed, and it's grouped under a bunch of deity's, then that group of deity's has a bunch of other deity's in it that are also grouped under a different term. Certain deity's also appear in different cultures and in that culture are also from a different sub-group because they have a different meaning, and all of this shit has its own wikipedia page.
It's basically one big Asian clusterfuck.

Never knew that shit was so neato.

[Anonymous No.6783258]

>>6783169
Yeah, that shit is intense. They are not particularly Buddhist though (at least not that I know). Thousands of years of tradition rendered an incredible rich panteon, that apparently has no end. Literally thousands and thousands of deities, with different stories to them, different ways to represent and so on. Some of them have parallels in states of mind, levels of intention, and so on. There are inumberable other worlds, as much as there are an inumerable ways to live life and to act. There are also Chinese and Japanese deities in there, also from folkloric traditions of Tibet and so on.

I think it is interesting to learn a bit about the way they are represented, what the colors mean, what symbols like the lotus flower, the flaming sword and so on mean, etc. You can literally spend your life studying it and never get bored or exhaust that resource. The mudras are particularly important, because each finger has a significance and each segment of the finger have a meaning and the mudras are specific positions that signify certain things. When you see a deity with n number of arms with this and that mudra on each of their hands you begin to read the image as a text and you understand it much better by just looking at it.

There are different types of breathing, different body postures, all classified and related. There is a distinction between thinking, mumbling, saying and shouting stuff, there is a distinction between intention before doing, intention while doing, intention after doing it, etc etc etc. My point is: yes, there is a lot of shit going on there, it's extremely interesting.

[Anonymous No.6783267]

>>6783258
lol wrong picture, nevermind that.

>>6783169
Take a look at this website, great stuff (albeit the site structure and visualization sucks)
http://www.himalayanart.org/pages/glossary.cfm

[Anonymous No.6783273]

>>6783258
>Blacksad
based.

[Anonymous No.6783276]

>>6781948

what about Theravada Buddhism?

[Anonymous No.6783286]

>>6781895
explain

[Anonymous No.6783303]

>>6782249
what is that belief called?

[Anonymous No.6783348]

>>6783267
Ay thanks man, really neato site.

This shit is so unbelievable cool, just the sheer scope of it.
In a way it's kind of disheartening knowing that you'll never know all of it, or even close to all of it.

[Anonymous No.6783417]

>>6783273
I'm glad it was this picture. Blacksad is great.

>>6783303
Perhaps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism

>>6783348
I think there is no reason to feel threatened by not knowing it all. To the buddhist, these things are much bigger than our life and you'll be able to meet with them all in one way or another. Try to get a general sense of it through the canons, as I said, and you'll feel more free to wander through them.

[Anonymous No.6783425]

>>6781894
wtf is this post. have you ever crushed a bug OP? where did its parts go? where did its guts go? NOTHING DISAPPEARED. however, maybe its sense of self did because it was...you know, dead. imagine dissecting yourself piece by piece, at one point do YOU disappear?

this is why we treat the ego as a clever construction. it will never have definite boundaries

[Anonymous No.6785232]

>>6783267
great site, thx

[Anonymous No.6786001]

bump for interest

[Anonymous No.6786036]

>>6781894
>why do people take it for granted that ego is an illusion?
I don't.
Inevitable rustled jimmies by anti-ego fags that can't conceive this statement because of the "I".

Serious philosophers from Leibniz to Husserl were all full ego.