The highest peaks of philosophy in buddhism are so profound that they should never be compared to the bible or any christian philosopher. They are completely free of semitic influence, not a trace of theism remains. Even the self is abandoned as a concept. Buddhism is a deep decentralizing, deconstructing, deprogramming, derealizing, depersonalizing, detaching process and practice. It's easy to abandon the thought of god, but how many atheists today are really just naive duelists clinging to Cartesian nonsense like "I think therefore I am" without realizing their sense of self is empty and illusory.
Buddhism goes deep into no-self philosophy until your sense of self is entirely erased. It's monastic nihilism because it encourages a meditative disciplined way of living without any concept of god or soul as a support. Other religions have monks but they're always after something (eternal life for self). Buddha and his monks were meditating to go extinct, to extinguish the seeds of rebirth, to prevent any birth at all into life. If that isn't antinatalism, what is? Buddhism is the most intense antinatalistic tradition ever, yet few seem to realize or discuss it from this angle.
So why has buddha become a friendly figure to society when he was a radical teaching a form of psychological suicide to an otherwise healthy normal group of young people? He was seducing them into a monastic way of life with the ultimate goal of disillusionment, detachment, nirvana. For one whose desires have faded, who has become disillusioned with life, there is nothing left to do except become a monk meditating. It's the buddha on the vulture peak meditating in a cave in profound silence instead of being home banging his wife. It's that decision to detach completely. Birth is nothing to celebrate, it just means a new heap of suffering has arisen and will suffer through all the same sickness and decay as the rest of us, all for nothing. Why keep this continuity of suffering going again and again? You don't even need to believe buddhist rebirth theory, some say the buddha didn't either. You can think of antinatalism in a simple scientific sense of no more procreation. Why should a species go on and on, killing and being killed in this cycle of life?
many people confuse buddha the model to buddha the wish granting spirit
very interesting post OP
I think people just need to dumb things down/'domesticate' foreign ideas in order to be able to feel like they understand them. Most westerners obviously don't actually know what you were talking about and in fact most buddhists I bet don't even see it that way. They just see it as their familiar culture, a series of rituals and so forth with not much deeper just like how most christians treat christianity.
In other words I'm betting that very few buddhists have the extremely nihilistic views that your post expressed, even if that was the original point of the religion, simply because that's how things tend to go - religions get coopted by the mainstream. You know what I mean.
>>5475989
This and OP are both examples of what make this the best board on one of the best websites.
>>5475918
>Birth is nothing to celebrate, it just means a new heap of suffering has arisen...
What? I'm not a parent, but isn't there happiness in seeing a child? Will the child itself not have happy experiences? I did as a child, and I still have positive experiences now.
Why shouldn't I go home and bang my wife? It's fun, and it makes me feel loved.
>>5475989
This guy answered it pretty well. Billions of people in Asia - not exactly antinatalistic. I'd imagine that all the people who DID get Gautama's message have passed on centuries ago. The people alive over there today are descended from the pissants who didn't get his memo.
>>5477601
Why is someone so stupid on /lit/? Go back to Facebook, you're clearly lost.
>>5475918
Buddhism was never anti-natalist, pseud. Get your cross-over fan-philosophy out of here.
Soooo I hate to be that guy, but could someone explain the whole "your self is an illusion" concept to me? I always had trouble grasping the particular bit of Buddhism, I mean it seems like i have a self and everyone else has a self.
>>5477640
prove to me that you have a self
>>5475989
>Most westerners obviously don't actually know what you were talking about and in fact most buddhists I bet don't even see it that way
lol no it's East Asians that corrupted Buddhism in the first place. They created a bunch of nonsense about the 'Pure Land' and such that basically turned it into a Hindu-themed version of Christianity.
>>5477643
A japanese hosso monk and zen master was teaching a class on Lao Ze, known riddler
”Before the class begins, you must adopt a meditation stance and reverence Lao Ze and accept that he was the most enlightened being the world has ever known, even greater than Heraclitus!”
At this moment, a brave, phenomenologist, continental German philosopher who had published over 1500 papers on hermeneutics and understood the necessity of an ontological characterization of human beings and fully supported all deconstruction of metaphysical thinking stood up and held up a rock.
”Does this rock have buddha nature?”
The arrogant professor smirked and smugly replied “mu, you stupid Westerner”
”Wrong. An existential analysis of the rock reveals that it has no language and therefore it is not opened to the disclosure of Being . If it was neither Dasein or not Dasein and its ontological nature, as you say, was indeterminate… then its rock-Being should be a concern to it!”
The monk was visibly shaken, and dropped his bonsai and copy of Tao te Ching. He stormed out of the room reciting those obsolete buddhist sutras. The same sutras buddhists recite for the “souls of the deceased” when they jealously try to devalue responsibility over their finitude from the deserving authentic Daseins. There is no doubt that at this point our monk, Gautama Boddhidarma, wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than an inauthentic onto theological thinker. He wished so much that he had a non metaphysical characterization of truth to reconstruct his ontology over a groundless ground, but he himself had petitioned against it!
The students applauded and all registered with the university of Freiburg that day and accepted Nietzsche as the last and greatest western crypto metaphysician. An eagle named “Ereigenis” flew into the room and perched atop an ancient oak and shed a tear on the now standing reserve of timber. The Ister was read several times, and Being itself showed up and spread existential angst across the country.
The monk lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of the technocratic plague nihilism and was tossed into the impossibility of possibilities for eternity.
Ex nihilo omnia
p.s. It rests by changing.
>>5477644
Jesus, stop talking.
>>5477643
Prove to me I don't have a self
>>5477649
It's true though? A large percentage of Buddhists in Asia believe that Siddhartha Guatama was basically Jesus sent to tell people that if they do good deeds they'll earn good karma and get to spend a few thousand years in the 'Pure Land' (i.e. heaven)
>>5477622
Maybe I'm trying to learn something.
>>5477640
Buddhists argue that because all things are impermanent and interrelated any individual thing is just the fleeting collection of phenomena. They argue that they self has no unchanging, unique quality so there is no permanent self at all.
>>5477640
http://web.archive.org/web/20140707092229/http://deoxy.org/egofalse.htm
Also consider that atoms are made up almost entirely of empty space. You never really touch anything. Everything is a continuation of everything else.
>>5477657
He is right. The Buddha's orginal message was distorted and Asia and India both added a bunch of ritual crap that wasn't part of the religion. My ex gf was an Asian Buddhist and I don't think she even knew about the Wheel of Life but she prayed to some some gods.
>>5477601
You are just making another being suffer by giving him life.
>>5477647
>>5477657
1) Pure Land Buddhism is one tradition of many in Mahayana and Asia.
2) the Western Paradise is not heaven.
3) You don't know what you're talking about.
4) You absolutely don't know more than even lay Asian Buddhists of a Pure Land tradition.
>>5477692
>implying there is being
>implying existence is separate from non-existence
>all these implications
>>5477601
Well, as I get it the idea is that to reach that birth the soul went through an absurd number of repetitions through the world until it got depurated into a being capable of reasoning. Once you reach that stage you can only ascend beyond the physical means or remain trapped in that stage. It's okay if you want to, it's just a chance you get to fulfill some sort of categorical imperative.
>>5477622
Why do you refuse to expose your thoughts to those interested in them?
>>5477624
But yeah, I'm with this guy. You could sort of see it that way but it's projecting a bit too much
>>5477640
>Within Buddhism, samsara is defined as the continual repetitive cycle of birth, death, and intermediate bardo state that arises from ordinary beings' generating and fixating on a mistaken concept of self and experiences. Samsara arises out of wrong knowledge about reality (avidya) and is characterized by dukkha (failure, suffering, anxiety, dissatisfaction). In the Buddhist view, liberation from samsara is possible by following the Buddhist path.
Its a religious concept and not a philosophical one. Because of belief in reincarnation and the oneness of things individual lives are thought to be illusory.
>>5477695
All Mahayana Buddhists believe in the Pure Land, Pure Land sects are just the ones who emphasize it.
Mainstream Buddhism in Asia is full of bullshit Siddhartha fanfic involving rituals and pure lands and gods and shit.
Stop being such a weeaboo most Asians don't understand real Buddhism any more than the average Westerner understands the theology behind Christianity.
>>5477601
According to Buddhism
1. happiness doesn't negate suffering
2. The child's happy experiences don't cancel out the inherent suffering from life
>>5477690
>>5477679
>>5477679
So I don't exist because I am not permanent and I am mostly empty space? First off, how do we really know atoms are mostly empty space? We didn't always know about atoms, who is to say there isn't something smaller in the space, like gravitons or something? Second, something doesn't have to be permanent to be real. We change every day sure but how does that mean our "self" isn't real?
>>5477692
I think you are repeating what the OP said. I'm saying that the newly-born being's life isn't all suffering. He can enjoy life and his experiences, as I have.
Why must life be suffering?
>>5477647
if you wrote that variant you should feel proud of you
Alright, this seems like a good thread to ask this: What should I read if I want to learn about Buddhism? Preferably secondary texts unless you think there are any primary ones that aren't too difficult without any background knowledge.
>>5477667
Alright, I apologize then. Its late, I'm on my phone, and I have work in the morning. So I'll be a 21st century parent and give you a video to watch instead of showing you myself :)
http://youtu.be/m7a04MAX2Cg
That should be the right one. Listen to the whole thing if you truly want to understand the concept of antinatalism.
>>5477647
Excellent read
>>5477703
Well I think we can all agree reincarnation is crap and it doesn't really make sense without a soul, or am I missing something? Sorry for my lack of knowledge but I stopped studying Buddhism because I could never get past the reincarnation phenomenon
>>5477713
Atoms never came into play, that's continental lies.
>>5477715
being alive is suffering.
Just the birth is painful, you will say:
>but their parents love them?
What is love?
is that love gonna be always there?
No.
>>5477729
In a sense it's been proven by science. Every atom in your body was once a part of someone elses.
That's probably not the same thing though.
>>5477655
I can't even prove to myself that I have a self.
Since you can't directly measure a self, there must be an indirect means to do so. I am assuming that which is immeasurable is inconsequental.
So, does your self have indirect effect on your environment?
From wiki
>The self is the subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts. In phenomenology, it is conceived as what experiences, and there isn't any experiencing without an experiencer, the self.
Does your personal experience alter the perceivable reality?
In science, personal experience does not count as proof, thus if you abandon the notion of a self, you lose no information.
The planets orbit the Sun and entropy increases no matter how you feel about it.
No selves.
>>5477712
Ok, so it doesn't negate suffering. Negative and positive experiences are part of the entertainment of life. So just as you might pay to ride a roller coaster (negative), you would still enjoy the ride (positive).
>>5477701
So choosing not to, for example, give birth or have sex, etc. is just a choice made with faith in the idea that doing so will lead to a better afterlife?
>>5477723
Seconding this
>>5477729
http://youtu.be/07Ch4A9PnZI
Makes perfect sense to
me.
>>5477732
There is suffering. Do you even Dukkha?
>>5477729
Well, the catholic soul comes from the platonic idea of perfect forms. You could call it soul but for a buddhists is just you, the rest is illusion.
>>5477723
If this thread is alive tomorrow afternoon, I'll give you a complete list. I'm not on my own computer at the moment.
>>5477746
It is an illusion itself too.
>>5477713
Our self is the real thing that maintains constant even if we change molecules, dead is just an illusion of the physical world as hard to ignore as it is to notice when you replace potassium or carbon.
>>5477713
Our concept of an object is a 4-dimensional one. Because things change over time, if you try and view objects 3-dimensionally the term becomes useless, because every time an object changes, it becomes a different object.
Like the old thought experiment, if you have a boat, and slowly replace the individual pieces one by one until every piece is replaced, is it still the same boat? Viewing the object 3-dimensionally makes the boat a different object every time you change a component of it, but looking at the object 4 dimensionally yields a new problem, what if you take all the pieces you removed from the boat, and put them together into a boat. Which boat is the real boat? Depending on how you look at the boat, it is either an object that slowly had individual aspects of it replaced, or an object that was slowly broken apart and reassembled. Both boats are The Boat at the same time.
And it just continues from there. The nails that were in that boat were once part of ore, that was in the ground, that was part of a mountain, etc. The more you look at it, the more objects branch out and become one another. Any distinction between objects is arbitrary, everything is one object.
>>5477734
Don't bring science into a clearly antimaterialistic discussion, it's like dawkins quoting jesus
>>5477740
>So choosing not to, for example, give birth or have sex, etc. is just a choice made with faith in the idea that doing so will lead to a better afterlife?
No. There is no 'afterlife' in Buddhism. There's reincarnation, but that's view as more an extension of one life. The goal is to achieve enlightenment by stripping away worldly desires, and to not create more suffering for others, because morality and whatnot.
>>5477743
OK well if there isnt a soul then what is being reincarnated? I mean when I die, if I am buried, I will become plant and fungi nutrients and something will eat those, but is that isn't reincarnating that's just the food chain.
Do Buddhists revere life?
>>5477740
>are part of the entertainment of life.
And life isn't about being entertained, that's a very modern american way of seeing things.
>that doing so will lead to a better afterlife
No, all life is present. You reincarnate because you never ceased being, it was just a different state of it. Once you brake the circle of reincarnation you become pure being, free of material ideas like cause and effect.
it's not about being happy for more time, it's about maturing.
>>5477692
You are just making another being able to enjoy life by giving it to him.
Whoa! This argument works too!
>>5477764
They enjoy it in a not posesive way, Buddha chose a cool tree to sit and meditate for example.
>>5477763
Personally, I used to be a Buddhist for a few years, and the whole reincarnation thing is one of the main reasons I don't call myself a Buddhist anymore. Maybe I'm missing something, but I never felt it gelled with the rest of Buddhism. Like, most of Buddhism is just philosiphy, but then there's reincarnation which is a completely unscientific spiritual thing.
You can interpret it as a sort of food chain, circle of life type thing, but that's really not accurate to Buddhism.
>>5477744
everything is dukkha.
>>5477776
>unscientific
lol
great criteria for your spiritual search
>>5477764
Kinda. For the most part yes, but not in the same way that some people do. Buddhists believe life is sacred and respect it in all it's forms, but do not consider death tragic, or people being born to necessarily be a good thing. It's in more of a 'respect the life that is and do not cause it suffering' type thing.
>>5477764
I'm no expert on Buddhism, but there is a view that human lives are blessed because there is the right balance of suffering and wisdom. The lower realms suffer too much to have wisdom about suffering and the higher realms don't suffer enough to have wisdom about suffering. They view human life as the type of life in which one has the greatest capacity to do good.
>>5477763
You're still holding on to this "you". Where were you before your birth? Where will you be after? You grow from conception, AKA accumulate earth, but somehow you are not earth?
Understand that you ARE the universe. All that exists is constant change. What happens, is happening, and will happen; it's all you. Ride the wave.
>>5477783
It's based on nothing. It's not based on logic or rationality or thought like the rest of Buddhism or other stuff in philosophies, it's a completely unfounded and unsupported claim on how the world physically works. It's no different than theism or belief in an afterlife in that respect.
The reincarnation of Buddhism isn't a philosophical aspect, it's a religious one.
>>5477776
Wow, Buddhism is a religion? What do you know?
Glad you were disappointed.
>>5477713
>I am mostly empty space?
No, "you" are a delicate and ever changing thing. Your body is composed of cells that age and die. Your mind is composed of thoughts that change and disappear. Who is this "you"? Buddhism says that "you" you think of is not there, your incorrect way of thinking leads you to believe that your self is real, so your mind is chained here. But contrary to the hipster OP, Buddhism is anti-nihilist. Those who awaken to the truth and become untethered, become enlightened, attain nibbana, which is basically absolute being without individual qualities.
>>5477794
K... guy. You're literally made of the same shit as the sun and asteroids. You are also literally made of the matter that used to be ancient fish and reptiles. How in the fuck is reincarnation not real?
>>5477805
Buddhism exists in a weird middle ground between religion and philosophy.
There is no creation myth. There are no deities. The majority of Buddhism is just philosophy. But you have these very occasional spiritual aspects such as reincarnation, which have no philisophical or logical basis.
It has too many spiritual aspects to just be a philosophy, but it's not a religion either, at least not in the way that something like Christianity or Hinduism is. It exists in the weird middle ground, where the only things remotely close to it are some asian religion/philosophies like Confucianism or Taoism.
>>5477729
Buddhism does not posit reincarnation. Buddhists claim there is no self that reincarnates but mental phenomena, like matter, dissipates and is reborn.
>>5477813
>There are no deities.
Buddhism is polytheistic. Buddha is canonically said to have had a conversation with Brahma, which shows that he is not really the creator of all things.
>>5477810
atoms don't constitute a person only, the arrangement of those atoms in a certain order is also necessary
whether the atoms that make up were part of a fish or a cat at some point is irrelevant
>>5477810
But that's not the reincarnation of Buddhism. Buddhism's reincarnation is a lot more specific than that, it deals heavily in karma, and karma's effect on the conditions of the rebirth.
Ya'll motherfuckers need Set. Develop your subjective universe. Work to make your subjective universe act in the objective universe. KHPR buddhafags
>>5477690
Are you in my metaphysics class right now?
Nevermind. What a stupid thought. Im really drunk
>>5477750
Not him, but please do.
>>5477843
Go back to /x/!!
Buddhism also emphasizes compassion and reverence for human (and all forms of sentient) life.
This is not a dogmatic tenet. It's a conclusion one reaches after seeing the world as it is.
OP's hostility to being is despairing and, as a Buddhist might say, aflame.
Being is. The world is. To call these-- fundamental of fundamentals! -- into question...
It brings despair, for such things are so far beyond one's power as to be flatly ridiculous: so you've given up on enduring life, but what about birds and bugs and mice? Is there aggregate suffering not far greater than all of humanity?
Life is not something to despair about. It is something to celebrate; otherwise, what else is there to celebrate?
>>5477908
Celebrate destruction?
>>5477792
this is solipsism, isn't it?
>>5477813
Why this obsession with classification and comparison?
It's just empty chatter that speaks over and around a vast collection of ideas that exceeds our comprehension and explodes across history.
Do you know how many brilliant minds have etched little marks on that thing we call "Buddhism"? All those sages and fools who spoke languages we'll never know, and lived lives we can't guess... surviving across the ages in practice and writing...
And here at long last, in the preceeding two or three centuries, it has begun to drip into the minds of the west, and all we can do is sit here and ponder whether it is is "religion" or "philosophy"?!
If I understand reincarnation correctly, it's not that I will be reborn, it's that I never was to begin with. I am not anything. Nothing within observation can be separated from anything else.
Have I kind of got it here?
Also, suffering refers to simply the nature of existence. A tornado displacing and killing a tree is no different from me stubbing my toe, or a father and son falling out. The changes and impermanence of the world we live in are in all things.
Am I on the right track here? What are the conclusions to made made after this? Does meditation move me toward the goal of escaping this?
>>5477916
It was a bit of a play on words. Without life there is literally, exactly, and completely NOTHING to celebrate.
Even someone who advocates (for God knows why) destruction, in all seriousness, is necessarily advocating life. There's nothing to destroy if there is no life.
Being precedes everything. To oppose being is to oppose everything. The idea collapses almost immediately.
>>5477941
There are many different ideas about reincarnation running through Buddhism and Indian religion in general.
If there's anything I know about karma/rebirth, it's that there is nothing simple about it and that one cannot possibly conclude he or she has "got it."
I know that's not super helpful, but you have to have respect for the size of the mountain you're about to climb if you're serious about getting up it.
>>5477940
That post was the single most pretentious thing I've read all day, and that's saying something.
>>5477949
Are you saying that advocating for the collapse of all things, forever and always, is not an acceptable stance?
>>5477957
I'm not trying to project any arrogance in the form of having 'got it'. I just wondered if I have a basic understanding of these concepts are. I listened to a series of lectures and this was my takeaway. To gain any more understanding obviously will take more study.
>>5477792
The idea that "I-being" is synonymous with "all-being" is found in pre-Buddhist Indian philosophy.
It's one of the earliest ideas in fact: the Atman-Brahman equivalence is a thesis of the Upanisads, usually guessed to have been written from the 5th-6th centuries BC on.
But the Buddha rejected it explicitly. Dependent arising and non-self do not propose an equivalence between the sense of I and the world entirely.
The notion of "the world" and of "I" are just that-- notions. The human mind is constantly doing this; taking overlapping intersections of ways of being and labeling it as a single object. Take our friend Steve for example.
What we call "Steve" isn't anything at all. It is a body-plane intersecting with planes of sensory experience and occasionally bursting out in speech!
Steve isn't a simple object. He's a collision of dharmas (ways, behaviors, inherent properties) that constantly shifts and rearranges, occasionally manifesting as Steve feeling sad or smiling to us.
>>5477963
I think people miss the point entirely when they go about trying to answer these kinds of questions, and I think that it's pretentious of us to try and situate massive traditions of thought into our tiny database of ideas.
I think we do it so we can feel like we understand, so we can talk about Buddhism at dinner, so we can feel some control over a depth that vastly exceeds us.
I don't see why it should be pretentious to emphasize that something is much bigger and much deeper than we realize.
>>5477965
It's a ridiculous question to even pose. We don't have control over it one way or another.
>>5477792
As a human being I have feelings and emotions, I can experience the world in all its beauty and horror. I do not solely rely on instinct and I am nothing like a rock except for the fact that we have share a few atoms. How am I not me?
>>5477808
The person I am is always changing but there is still a spark inside of me, some call it a soul, I don't believe in souls but I still feel like there is something, the symbolic me if you will. How would I even begin to let go of that symbol?
>>5477941
I remember hearing that the word Buddha used is more closely translated as meaning unsatisfied than suffering. No matter what we desire anytime we get what desire we are never fully satisfied. You will always hunger and thirst, you will always be restless. Life is ultimately unsatisfying.
>>5478000
No, but we could extinguish our own species, and possibly all life on this planet by the year 2500.
>>5477970
Yeah you're right, and my post was not helpful.
A few distinct ideas of karma have rubbed off on me.
There is the sense that karma/rebirth explains what looks to us like injustice: it is the reason why one person experiences more misery than another.
There is the understanding that death/rebirth is nothing but the dissolving of consciousness (jiva, here) into smaller bits, which reassemble again into other forms of consciousness (Jainism).
There is the sense that karma is a link between the different worlds; the world of the Gods, the world of men, the world of enduring bliss.
There is it's most ancient meaning-- "(ritual) acts." In the Vedas, karma was the force that gave the vedic sacrifice rituals their power. One who performed the recitations and rituals properly (karma) could force even the gods to act in a certain way.
There's the modern western apprehension, which is certainly found in Indian thought as well: karma is "what goes around comes around" -- it is heavily tied to morality and causality in this life.
Does Buddhism have a particular reason for respecting life and opposing suffering? If anything it seems like it wouldn't recognize the distinction between living objects (i.e. people) and nonliving ones.
>>5478001
>The person I am is always changing but there is still a spark inside of me,
Not the person you're replying to, but the "spark inside" is literally your sense of "I." It's nothing but a construction the mind uses to navigate the world; an inevitable consequence of the sense organs being located so close to one another.
If you are that "I" inside your head, and you are really a real thing, then where are you? Are you in the middle of your head? Are you slightly to the left? Are you all throughout your eyes and ears, and down into your toes? Do you stop where your skin stops?
For a modern perspective, see Hofstadter.
>>5477723
Interested in this as well, cheers guys.
>>5478024
Compassion is something that inevitably occurs when you realize that there are other people who experience the world as you do.
This idea is easy to express in language but it's extremely difficult to hold down in your actual experience! I certainly don't claim to.
If you're like me you realize that all those other people in the world are mini-worlds walking around with their own centers, and their own "I"- but you find it astonishing and difficult to sustain this realization for any amount of time ("WOW!! Look at all these people, just like me! Oh shoot, why am I people watching. I have to go get the dry-cleaning...").
>>5478033
>>5477723
Here's my reading list for the semester, and I have a very good professor who has spent the last 50 years studying Buddhism and speaks seven languages.
*Gethin "Sayings of the Buddha"
*Gethin "Foundations of Buddhism"
*Nagapriya "Exploring Karma and Rebirth"
*Carpenter "Indian Buddhist Philosophy"
*Harding "Studying Buddhism in Practice"
There has been a handful of posts here asking for secondary texts on Buddhism. Here are two that I particularly liked (one is actually a general Indian philosophy thing, but hey, there's a bunch of cool shit going on in ancient India).
Buddhism as Philosophy by Mark Siderits
Classical Indian Philosophy by J.N. Mohanty
Some people take issue with Siderits due to his biases and his eisegesis but as far as an introduction goes, it's pretty nice. Mohanty's book is a little more philosophically rigorous while still being general (it covers a lot of material in a short amount of space).
I'm no expert on Buddhism in the slightest, I just have a passing interest in it really. So perhaps someone will come in here with better sources.
And they did!>>5478049
>>5477657
Pure Land Buddhists hold Amida as the Jesus-y Buddha. I don't think anyone gave a shit about ol' Sid by the second dharma. I know all Japanese Buddhist sects take power away from Sid. Shingon and Tendai hold that Sid basically gave a babby's-first version of the real path to Enlightenment because lay people were too dumb to comprehend the esoteric ideas.
Source: I'm studying East Asian Buddhism in uni
>>5477715
Buddhist "suffering" is a harsh mistranslation. The original Sanskrit is more akin to "inconvenience." Everything is an inconvenience, and to be Enlightened is to be unburdened from these inconveniences. Essentially.
>>5477813
>Buddhism is the "middle way" between hedonism and asceticism
>Buddhism is the middle way between philosophy and religionDEEPEST LORE
"Buddhism goes deep into no-self philosophy until your sense of self is entirely erased. It's monastic nihilism because it encourages a meditative disciplined way of living without any concept of god or soul as a support. Other religions have monks but they're always after something (eternal life for self). Buddha and his monks were meditating to go extinct, to extinguish the seeds of rebirth, to prevent any birth at all into life. If that isn't antinatalism, what is? Buddhism is the most intense antinatalistic tradition ever, yet few seem to realize or discuss it from this angle. "
Can we see where this is actually implicated in the source material, pls no secondaries.
>>5478097
Hint: there are no sources for this.
>>5478094
>Madhyamaka is the middle way within Buddhism itself
Nagarjuna confirmed for deepest philosopher.
>mfw I simply gave up desire for result and got all the results
>now dancing atop myself as a sexy Dakini
>>5477792
give in to the healing earth magic of the universe wooOooOoooo
>>5478116
yeah bro blaze it up lmao
>>5478105
So why the fuck do people keep saying it?
>>5478132
my nigga
>mfw Godel showed that all logical axioms are inherently untrue in some respect
>mfw Buhhda was right and absolute truth is impossible. As is any real logical costruct such as the "self" or "meaning"
>mfw Godel's theorem is also inhrently wrong or it disproves itself.
>mfw illogical universe
>Not one mention of Siddharta by Hesse
For shame /lit/. I think the core experience of the protagonist in Siddhartha and his experience speaking with the Buddha is relevant to OP's question:
>Why should a species go on and on, killing and being killed in this cycle of life?
There are some spiritual leaders that can develop that realization -- the wheel, suffering, etc, all of it quickly and on their own (The Buddha).
Most people can't though. A small number of people will have this innate desire to seek out a spiritual teacher.
But most people, the far majority of people can't attain realization until they have experienced most or all of what life has to offer.
Words on paper and even words from a realized person can ring hollow.
But when someone experiences pain, death, violence, sex, birth, love, hate, fear, etc for their whole lives, that suffering builds the staircase for realization.
That's my interpretation based on what Hesse wrote anyway -- it might contradict the actual Buddhist teachings.
>>5477703
>wrong knowledge about reality
>a vidya
Top kek.
Yo real talk /lit/
Where did the whole fat happy buddha thing come from?
Buddha was an Indian/Nepali prince who attained realization... not some happy fat dude who looks like he belongs in some hedonistic court with a bunch of bellydancers around him
>>5478161
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budai
bump so I can post the books I promised about Buddhism tomorrow when I'm at my own computer
Is it just me or are there a lot of similarities between Buddhism and Gnosticism?
>>5475918
I think "psychological suicide" or "antinatalism" is at least as much an oversimplification of Buddhism as any Lululemon shit
I mean, why does Buddhism not actually advocate suicide or antinatalism? Think about it.
>muh reincarnation
but that's an article of faith, at least if you understand it naïvely. And the kind of pure Buddhism you're describing (i.e. divorced from all the Chinese/Japanese/Tibetan literal gods and demons stuff) made a point of abandoning those to reach the truth. It applied an almost scientific method to human suffering.
However, as you observed, Buddhism successfully deconstructed the notion of self. So personally dying, or personally not procreating, means jack. There is no important difference between you/your offspring and whoever else would go on living in their stead. You are all just part of the same self-deluded mass of life. Even if the human species were to die out, animals would go on killing and being killed, only without the potential to reach nirvana by meditation until some other "intelligent" species evolved.
Buddhism doesn't aim to abscond from reality in despair because that would be meaningless. It aims to transform suffering via an encounter with its opposite. Even the Buddha himself, for that reason, returned to the engage with this world of suffering for the sake of all those still living in it, knowing that he could detach himself from suffering when necessary. This is the model that Buddhism wants you to emulate.Totally different consciousness-focused religion, but you should read Idries Shah's book The Sufis for a more in-depth exploration of the idea of returning to the world from an "Enlightening" experience as a necessary aspect of living in accordance with it
>>5478197
Good post.
>>5477624
This pretty much. OP has a warped understanding of Buddhism.
Daily reminder that Westerners can only understand Buddhist philosophy through the use of psychedelics
>>5478211
er, no.
The Bible shares many of the same wisdom you can find in Buddhist teachings, its just that people don't know how to read it.
>>5478221
The bible can't teach ego death, which is pretty much the core of Buddhist (or at least Zen) philosophy even if it writes about it. Ego death can only be understood experientially, and it especially difficult in western culture because of exceptionally advanced individualism.
>>5478236
Gnostics did
Nobody in these threads ever knows anything about Buddhist philosophy. The Way of Zen should be required reading for these threads.
http://terebess.hu/english/AlanWatts-The%20Way%20of%20Zen.pdf
Educate yourselves
>>5477647
/thread
>>5478236
Do you even know what Ego death is
True Christianity is all about anihilating self importance, but at the same tine, where does Budhissm denounce individuality? Isnt the Middle Way about embracing life and spirituality without going to either extreme?
>>5478239
I mean, I don't deny that (not that I'm a bible scholar or anything), but it's essentially impossible for a Western audience to understand ego death, even if it made sense to ancient Semitic tribes.
>>5478244
No. The Middle Way is about abstaining from material pleasure without fucking starving yourself.
Buddhism absolutely denounces individuality. It abdicates that such thing as an individual ego exists.
>>5478251
it seems to be about avoiding extremes, according to wikipedia...
and you cannot avoid individuality at all in a practical sense
>>5478244
>True Christianity is all about...
No true christian ;)
And you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Ego death has nothing to do with "self-importance"; it's the loss of your idea of yourself, ie your "self" becomes identical to your consciousness.
But again, this isn't something that can be understood unless it is experienced, which is what I was originally getting at. Even if Christianity was originally "about" ego death, it is now unable to provide an experience of ego death on its own because of western culture.
>>5478261
tldr: do psychedelics
>>5478258
>avoiding extremes
see above post.
>according to wikipedia
lol.
Here's a definition of the middle passage from an actual Buddhist:
>An outstanding aspect of the Buddha's Teaching is the adoption of the Eightfold Path is the Middle Path. The Buddha advised His followers to follow this Path so as to avoid the extremes of sensual pleasures and self-mortification. The Middle Path is a righteous way of life which does not advocate the acceptance of decrees given by someone outside oneself. A person practises the Middle Path, the guide for moral conduct, not out of fear of any supernatural agency, but out of the intrinsic value in following such an action. He chooses this self-imposed discipline for a definite end in view: self-purification.
>The Middle Path is a planned course of inward culture and progress. A person can make real progress in righteousness and insight by following this Path, and not by engaging in external worship and prayers. According to the Buddha, anyone who lives in accordance with the Dhamma will be guided and protected by that very Law. When a person lives according to Dhamma, he will also be living in harmony with the universal law.
(http://www.budsas.org/ebud/whatbudbeliev/78.htm)
I see nothing about individuality being a good thing.
>>5477657
>It's true though?
Yes, it's true. The original gautamist Buddhism is an anti-human totalitarian sect, literally an evil religion.
The 'Buddhism' in East Asia today is just hindu-themed cultural baggage without the caste system cancer.
>>5478265
bro, what you just posted literally repeats what ive been saying. And Christianity is very big on self-purification
>>5478272
As an unbiased observer: you are wrong and need to stop posting
>>5478277
>The Buddha advised His followers to follow this Path so as to avoid the extremes of sensual pleasures and self-mortification.
thats all, it says literally nothing about avoiding sensual pleasures, just not indulging in them. If you want to lock yourself into a monastery thats your call, but you're not anymore faithful or worse off than someone who simplu practicees moderation and makes an effort to inprove themselves
how the fuck do people confuse such a simple message into all this life denying rhetoric?
>>5478282
Gautamic Buddhism was an esoteric cult. Meaning that the rules for the 'inner circle' of true believers are different from the rules for the 'herd' that's only there to cough up the money.
See catharism or masonry for more modern examples of the same.
>>5478317
I'll look into that, thanks.
Gotta admit my Christianity points were largely unprepared and off-the-cuff, guess I'll have to study some more.
>>5478241
>Allan watts
I can learn about Buddhism without the help of a washed up beat, thanks
