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buddhism was literally invented by an indian noble who got sad because he had no obstacles. and remember the japanese soldiers were trained using buddhism
I agree with the broader point that :LIB: culture lionizes Buddhism in a way that is reductive and decontextualized, sort of the mirror image of how it vilifies socialism.
(That said, the swastika predates Buddhism by many thousands of years, so this is not really an effective way to make that point.)
The swastika was a pretty universal symbol. It's not exactly complicated geometry.
Yes, but they took more than the symbol, the whole indo-aryan purity and whatever. Arguably stuff like this isn't part of buddhism, but there are also plenty of things that shouldn't be part of christianity that sort of come along for the ride.
Nazi mysticism is a syncretic theology, so they kinda just took whatever they needed from wherever to serve the needs of the moment.
I could go on, the Swastika is a buddhist symbol etc.
Are you trying to imply that is a bad thing somehow? It is also a Hindu symbol. You'll see t absolutely everywhere in India. Temples. trucks, doors, everything has swastikas on it
IIRC Nietzsche had a more favorable view towards Buddhism than Christianity, although his exposure to it was largely through Schopenhauer and there were only bad translations available at the time.
SEP has various articles on Buddhism. Although there isn't much interaction between "western" and "eastern" philosophy for a variety of reasons (such as translation and differences in methodology), there is more than enough English-language stuff available for a lifetime of reading if that's what you're into.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buddha/
Because of eating so little my backside became like a camel’s hoof
Buddha had Hank Hill ass confirmed
It's a reasonable question but it's very different. First killing yourself doesn't remove you from the cycle of birth and suffering. Second the concept of non-self isn't like death. You already are a non-self, anatma. You have no permanent soul and there is no fixed essence to anything. Dying isn't ending anything.
So instead of a soul being the religion's continuity it's the cycle of birth of death.
And the concept of emptiness is more divine and less nihilistic than it sounds. Our experience of the world isn't our experience of the things in themselves but of our concepts of those things. So our awareness of true reality remains false even though we live in it.
So think about what you're doing when you're meditating, how you're perceiving things, stimuli and emotions without reacting to them, categorizing, or judging them. That is one notion of "emptiness" and you can see it's very different from being dead.
ok but that is the illusion. Remember you are only ever thinking your concepts of reality, not reality. So in some divine and super mystical way you are no more your thoughts than the table is your concept of the table. what happens to a table when you die?
That's the ego resisting. Personally, use of psychedelics / ego death under the same both made what they described above extremely clear and cured me of the fear of death completely.
From what I understand it's more about understanding that pleasure/suffering (or maybe degrees of suffering?) are a part of a cycle rather than static things and trying to transcend that cycle through a sort of mysticism and self improvement all deeply intertwined with various eastern religions/folk tales.
Like don't constantly run from suffering because suffering is inevitable. Instead understand life is just various degrees of suffering and try to transcend that suffering by reorienting your understanding and approach,
It is mostly about living in the moment rather than hanging on to attachment of things like sadness or happiness as it is part of life and these things come and go, practicing mindfulness and living in the moment really helped me when I lost a loved one and honestly seeing the way people are reacting to Buddhism in this thread is pretty annoying. Literally every religion has a dark past etc... but the fact that Buddhism is the only religion that gets this kind of treatment on chapochat is strange.
Yeah I certainly find it interesting as a philosophy although it is certainly pretty dogmatic but goddam I swear people are pretty reactionary about it
While I'm not a Buddhist and really don't know that much about it, from what I understand it seems to promote that sort of ironic or stoic detachment rather than a destructive detachment. If you start from the premise that all life is suffering, then Buddhism takes the position that one would appreciate the small joys (or moments of less suffering) much more than if they were constantly pursued to destructive ends and that you have to make a conscious effort to not fall into these destructive practices.
It's hard for me to explain any deeper though both because I don't know that much more and its a massive and diverse religion. Like there might be a distinction between understanding that suffering is temporary and trying to be stoic. "Destructive practices" is a pretty vague idea. At it's core its an idealist philosophy heavy religion so obviously its gonna have a lot of problems even if something like the eightfold path offers a useful framework for approaching life
Like I said, in practice it varies a lot through different cultures and time. There is also usually a distinction between what regular everyday Buddhists should do and what monks/Boddhisattva (those trying to achieve Buddhahood) do, maybe with the understanding that eventually all souls will live the life of a monk and achieve enlightenment.
And not to be pedantic, but do you mean "asceticism"? Aestheticism is like devotion to art or something like that. Asceticism is self imposed austerity and anti-hedonism.
That book is supposed to be an answer to the Christian gospels: it’s made by a Pure Land temple but doesn’t actually focus on Pure Land teachings, instead, it takes a words-of-the-founder approach so as to make sense for people coming from a Protestant background.
The thing is, much of Buddhism just isn’t focused on early texts or Gautama Buddha—he plays a comparatively small role in many Mahayana or Vajrayana traditions, and isn’t necessarily venerated above other Buddhas.
Excerpts from the Tripitaka (the early Buddhist scripture this book is based on) also won’t provide social and cultural context or explain actual Buddhist practice. Wikipedia would actually be a better resource in my opinion.
Perhaps try looking into the Yogācāra form of Buddhism as it is a much more dialectical form of Buddhism and is very compatible with socialism and is mainly practiced in Vietnam so it doesn’t reflect the whole individualism bs that other forms do
Yogacara is some weird stuff. Positing full Solipsism, but also positing that every other mind also exists inside that mindscape, and we're all just a single brain in a vat dreaming, except there's no brain and no vat, just the impression of existence.
what the fuck is buddhism “oh it’s about avoiding the cycle of pleasure and suff-” how is that different from from wanting to kill yourself with extra steps explain what buddhism is to me i’ll fucking kill you
If you ever are walking on a road and meet the Buddha, you should kill him. You are more Buddhist than you realize.
Buddhism is about the cessation of suffering. Suffering, in the buddhist view, is caused by attachment. There are three kinds of craving that lead to attachment, the longing to satisfy your senses (with sex, food, music, drugs, love, family, I could go on but its a long list), the longing to be something and self-actualize, and the longing for self-negation (read: death and suicide). Craving the cessation of existence is just another vector for attachment and suffering. Buddha called his way "The Middle Path" because it was a way between Extreme Abnegation and Pure Hedonism - both of which he found were not able to fulfill him or satisfy his cravings. It's something you know in your own life, even when times are good there is always a feeling that things are not quite satisfactory.
So Buddhism teaches that this suffering/non-satisfaction is a state that can be ended and gives you the tools to do it by. Become non-attached. The practice of Buddhism offers a number of ways to becoming non-attached, meditate and go to a temple and study, recognize the dignity and sanctity of all life and put that recognition into practice through vegetarianism for example, meditate and suddenly become enlightened, do certain rituals that help focus your mind on non-attachment, read through certain texts like the Heart Sutra, meditate on incomprehensible Zen Koans after sitting in a hard ass pose for 10 hours, and so on. But the goal of it is to end the suffering in your own life by becoming non-attached (cravings are inevitable but you don't have to let cravings become attachment).
I've struggled with similar issues regarding meaning and suffering. The other week I read "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Camus. It was a very helpful and liberating experience for me. It's on libgen, but I could find a link for you if you want. It's sort of entirely about what a person can do when they get to that point where they realize they want meaning and understanding, but that life doesn't offer it and cannot. Camus envisions two options: real or philosophical suicide or finding a way to remain in that space anyway. He spends most of the text exploring the second option. The first chapter is a little hard to get through, (lots of terminology and references to other philosophers,) but after that it's a pretty engaging read.
Probably something that merged out of the material conditions of India, and was modified where it spread. Also some of their monks can balance on blades which is pretty cool
I think the first thing to consider is that approaching Buddhism as philosophy may not lead to fruitful insight. I was introduced to Buddhism through the works of Thich Nhat Hanh and one of the most profound things I learned from his writings was that Buddhism is something we have to practice in order to understand. I like to think I'm sorta knowledgeable on the topic but not enough to try and lay out any basic teachings in this moment. Some books/sources that have really helped guide me are Plum village (they have a free app that is really great!) and the Mind Illuminated (neuroscience based meditation guide).
If you are really interested in understanding Buddhism then I'd recommend starting out slow with a form of meditation practice that you find compelling (sitting, walking, chanting, loving-kindness). Try and take it easy on yourself! Even the fact that you are investigating these feelings and searching for answers is a beautiful thing, whether or not you feel called to practice Buddhism or not!
When I first was introduced to buddhism I was in a pretty bad place, I think it was when the climate report came out and everything felt meaningless and my death seemed just around the corner. In an old bookstore I found the book Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh and I learned about loving-kindness meditation. Before that I always thought meditation, and buddhism by extension, was silently staring at a wall, focusing your mind until you didn't feel anything, and really cutting yourself off from life. The practice of loving-kindness helped to open my understanding and crack that shell of cynicism that I had previously used to protect myself. This practice was enough to help me crawl through those dark times.
Life still feels meaningless sometimes, its still hard, sometimes the feelings of helplessness and despair still crop up but now I just have more tools for handling those feelings. It isn't easy to sit with unpleasant feelings, but sometimes acknowledging them can really help. If I feel anxious sometimes I'll say to myself "I feel anxiety arising. Hello my anxiety I am here for you, I will help take care of you." Sometimes just that is enough for my body to relax and my mind to calm. Maybe something like that would work for you and maybe not, but I believe that you can find some practice that does feel right for you!
it's a religious, philosophical, and ethical system created by people of a different race thousands of years ago which to them appears to be a coherent and meaningful design for living.
