If you were born in medieval england you could never even dream to have access to the genius minds of the ages and consume that information to better your own mind.
Over thousands of years there is a philosophy that has mastered and achieved a way towards peace, serenity and happiness.
NO it doesn't mean you will never suffer again
NO it doesn't fix everything
YES it does make existence better
YES you could actually be happy overall
Why aren't you a Buddhist yet and why do you insist on your feeble excuses to keep suffering?
start here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jack+kornfield
>Non-asian Buddhists
If you were born in medieval england you would be happy as a pig in shit because you would be living the life Buddha said is the way to end suffering.
>>24737674
Because reincarnation is a load bullshit.
>>24737702
yfw asians now request lecturers from western experts
yfw when geography limited certain teachings to some ethnicities but this is irrelevant now.
yfw when there was a time chinese had a monopoly on gunpowder
yfw when german had a monopoly on glass-lens making for 100 years.
please I said no feeble excuses.
try harder to be depressed.
>50% delude oneself that one is not caring and 50% actually care less
>'path to happiness'
>>24737674
Also, even though no one ITT, particularly not Buddhists, will notice, it's not a good omen to start a thread with a picture that contains a lie, OP.
>>24737720
except that's a load of shit because you would be in physical and mental pain from not knowing shit about yourself and those around you and being overworked and anxious about living, diseases and being poisoned by christian fear constantly.
don't idolize the past. it was worst.
>>24737729
you're not required to believe everything in order to learn useful things. There are plenty of modern buddhist practitioners that removed the ancient woo-woo from the practice.
another feeble excuse.
>>24737788
>implying you don't already live in a constant delusion manufactured by your fears, anxieties and misconceptions about the world
There is no self-delusion in buddhism you are the measure of your own progress and the effects on your life are subjective to you but you yourself can apply an objective standard to your progress.
>>24737818
>from not knowing shit about yourself and those around you
Why assume that?
>don't idolize the past. it was worst.
Slavery, women in their place, awesome battles between nations. Sounds pretty sweet to me.
>>24737818
>you would be in physical and mental pain from not knowing shit about yourself
This is exactly what Siddhartha caused, by imbibing people with the purported necessity of 'observing one's thoughts' and 'observing one's emotions' and other schizophrenic immaterial bullshit instead of helping them develop better medicine, for instance, or advance society in any other terms (technological, legal, ...) if only people were fuelled by burning desire to keep up with their neighbours and outdo them. It is burning desire that advances civilization.
>>24737855
>There is no self-delusion in buddhism
Actually, this is true in a way. Delusions have to be falsifiable; and Buddhism at no point comes into proximity of the concepts of true and false.
>>24737901
>It is burning desire that advances civilization.
In other words, the suffering that anger and anxiety and envy wreaks onto the individual experiencing them nonetheless causes the societal strife and stir that gets people to think about solutions to the problems and challenges they set for themselves and render for another, which result in e.g. scientific and economic progress. Individual suffering causes societal progress. Individual happiness causes societal regress.
>>24737976
(>inb4 the moderation fallacy)
Taoism is the superior fedora "faith".
>>24738000
not a faith
but can you explain what you're trying to say?
>>24738027
>not a faith
Literally every faith will say 'we're not a faith'.
>>24738045
explain how taoism is a faith
it doesn't require any beliefs
>>24738057
Perhaps surprisingly, 'belief' is to crude a concept to refer to religions. The concept of truth which it presupposes is too unambiguous; what makes a religion is reluctance to define criteria for true and false to begin with. Religions are more of tendencies of brains to, excuse my vernacular, react with crude chunks of concepts to situations in communication or in writing. The key concept is relevance. When a taoist spouts his shit that 'true x is not x', for instance, 'true truth is not truth', his brain produces a sensation of relevance, a satisfaction, delight in the paradoxy of that claim, and only then, later, the fact that it can tenuously be construed and developed into a proper, albeit just as platitudinous, form of 'a person who knows things tends to know they still don't know a lot as well'. While avoiding addressing the problem at hand whatsoever, which might be, for instance, deciding the best schedule of something. Or, again, a follower of an eastern faith might, under the same mistaken sense of relevance, interrupt a discussion with 'true looking is not looking', so to imply that 'one is not an aware person until one looks at the broader context, here: at why one is having the discussion to begin with'. Except such interruptions never get anything done, they're just irrelevant, safe (and anti-intellectual, might be added) noise.
Religions are not about belief; they are about misapplied ambiguity with no concern for the situation under discussion. Religious people usually have no beliefs (in the sense of hypotheses or conjectures or whatever) in the first place.
buddhism is drivel about basically giving up in the physical world, it is a slave religion so you can be pushed around by warlords and not fight back
if you are suffering in life be a grown up and change it, dont just pretend it doesnt bother you
>>24738185
In short, there is faith in Buddhism and Taoism and the rest of the cesspool: it is faith that what one has to say was pertinent.
>>24738220
>buddhism is drivel about basically giving up in the physical world
You are right, but have fun addressing the 'muh middle path' sophistry.
>>24738185
In other words, the moment you begin to understand religions is when your interests shift from defining truth to defining relevance. This will reveal that (on the level of meaning, not on the level of intent behind that meaning, which is a whole different story) 100% of religious claims are either tautologies ('it is good to be kind', 'awareness is being critical', 'let go of everything that is unimportant') or irrelevant, obverabstracted nonsense ('duality/truth/ego is...').
>>24738461
This.
It's a sort of immature position to be a "truth" worshipper.
I am a trained statistician/bayesian and physicist and for years I thought TRUTH about all else is the relevant fundamental value in my life.
But it is not... well-being and happiness trumps all.
