Christianity is just Platonism for people who can't handle Platonism. The form of the Good gets a beard and a temper, the problem of evil becomes a character flaw in God that requires a human sacrifice to fix, and you're supposed to spend your whole life in a subject/object relationship with a being whose main thing is that you owe him. Buddhism figured out that the subject doing the owing is already a confabulation. There's no self to be saved. The whole soteriological architecture of Christianity collapses the moment you take dependent co-origination seriously because there's nobody to redeem and nothing to redeem them from in the way Christianity means it. And impermanence isn't a consolation prize for not having a heaven, it's the actual structure of experience which Christianity just slaps a narrative onto so people don't have to sit with it. The amount of metaphysical infrastructure Christianity needs to prop up what is basically a guilt economy is embarrassing. Original sin is doing so much work. Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā treats causation more rigorously in its opening verses than the entire Western theological tradition manages in two thousand years, which fine, different projects, but don't tell me they're equivalent.
that read like a bunch of nonsense from someone who doesn't understand anything about christianity and likes using big words to sound smart.
>M-muh the reality isn't real, you can just enlighten bro! Buddhism is just cope.
>>18465194You're going to hell for this
Anon, I think you need to read more about Christianity. PSA is not the extent of the Atonement, to put it simply. Pretty much everyone until modernist chuds started popping up believed that the Atonement was at least Recapitualtive and led to the defeat of Evil. Theosis is a major part of Christianity as well, though its heavily deemphasized in the West outside of Roman Catholic and Evangelical Catholic (Lutheran) circles. Its not all about guilt, its chiefly about love and union.
>>18465194>There's no self to be saved.What is reading your post right now?
>>18465219Tat Tvam Asi. You are OP, which is the same as neither of you being anything with an own-nature
>>18465219An aggregate of the skandhas. "The self" is a practical identity but not an independent reality.
>>18465227>>18465230This sounds like a Catholic trying to explain transubstantiation but they can only copy words they have heard are the right answers instead of put it on coherent terms, like a grade schooler repeating "protons are particles" having not real understanding of what this is meant when somebody who understands says this.So are you going to give me an answer to my question in English, or are you just going to repeat loanwords you've been told are the right answer?
>>18465244I'll explain it to you like you're a third grader, there is no "permanent self" the "self" is like a flowing river, the water is constantly renewed just like that the various things that make up the "self" are also constantly changing. The "self" that is currently reading this post is the effect of an initial cause, i.e. the "self" that decided to open the device.
>>18465259So what you actually meant was "there is a self, but it doesn't last long".
>>18465273Kinda like that.
>>18465279Now if a self can come into being once - even if only briefly - wouldn't it be possible for it to come into being again?
>>18465259So buddhism is just materialism/physicalism?
>>18465302Not really, there are deities and "higher beings" in Buddhism but they also go through the cycle of birth and reincarnation, they are also subjects of the Samsara and can achieve Nirvana
>>18465259This is just empty individualism worded in the most confusing way possible. Buddhism has a habit of taking unintuitive concepts and then making riddles out of them
>>18465319>Buddhism has a habit of taking unintuitive concepts and then making riddles out of themThat's actually Zen, not traditional Buddhism
>>18465319Self= changing chain of cause and effectIf your "current self" jerks off, that's a cause of an initial effect i.e. you being horny. Do you understand now?
>>18465326That sounds more like attaching the identity of the self to the body which i dont agree with. The body may change, the mind may change but the observer that sees through the lens of the body and mind remains the same. If you were only your everchanging body/mind, who is the one that experiences it?
>>18465326I'm going to put on a name so it's clearer who is who. I was the one who asked >>18465219How far back does this chain of causes and effects go?
>>18465314What about Zen Buddhism? Is that closer to materialism/physicalism?
>>18465194Your tone and choice of language make it clear that you think you're really smart, so I guess I'll just take your word for it.
>>18465326>>18465342And so that I don't look like I'm trying to hide the ball, let me lay out my position, which is the polar opposite of your's. I am of the opinion that impermanence is the illusion. That all good things are permanent.
>>18465342>How far back does this chain of causes and effects go?Buddhism actually ignores this lol. The concept of "pratītyasamutpāda" just explains dependent origination but it ignores the initial "cause".The only explanation is that the "chain" is a circle.
>>18465350I'm not a Buddhist
>>18465352>The only explanation is that the "chain" is a circle.Clearly that can't be so. Buddhism teaches that you can obtain genuine, permanent liberation from the cycle of birth and death. This wouldn't be possible if time were a circle since things must be identical at each point on the go-around. If there is true change like this, then it must move forward. Perhaps that forward looks like a spiral, but it is indeed forward. Right?>>18465354Ah. Well, you can see how I would get that impression I'm sure. What do you believe?
Imo the difficulty with understanding the Buddhist concept of self is that it's something the Buddha explicitly wants to leave undefined, even to the point of refusing to say whether it exists or not (so anatta more accurately means "not self" rather than "no self").https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN22.html“Monks, you would do well to cling to that clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair. But do you see a clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair?”“No, lord.”“Very good, monks. I, too, do not envision a clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair."Instead, you can talk about perception of self, which is the activity of identifying with an aspect of experience or something inferred to be related to an aspect of experience, what the Buddha in some places calls "I-making and "my-making."https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN3_33.html"Then, Sāriputta, you should train yourselves: ‘There will be no I-making or mine-making conceit-obsession with regard to this conscious body..."https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN44.html"There is the case, friend Visākha, where an uninstructed run-of-the-mill person... who is not well-versed or disciplined in their Dhamma... assumes form [e.g., the body] to be the self, or the self as possessing form, or form as in the self, or the self as in form...He assumes feeling to be the self.… He assumes perception to be the self.… He assumes fabrications to be the self.… He assumes consciousness to be the self..."
>>18465362>Ah. Well, you can see how I would get that impression I'm sure. What do you believeHonestly, I don't even know. I've given up on forming a "clear worldview", my brain is too overloaded with information.
>>18465375>“Monks, you would do well to cling to that clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair. But do you see a clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair?”I feel like im dyslexic reading this, i have no idea what he is trying to say
>>18465375The Buddha does have a somewhat clearer definition of "a being" which is what you are whenever there's clinging to the aggregates.https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN23_2.html“‘A being,’ lord. ‘A being,’ it’s said. To what extent is one said to be ‘a being’?”“Any desire, passion, delight, or craving for form, (feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness) when one is caught up there, tied up there, one is said to be 'a being.'https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_36.html"If one stays obsessed with form, (feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness) lord, that’s what one is measured by. Whatever one is measured by, that’s how one is classified.""But if one doesn’t stay obsessed with form,(feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness) lord, that’s not what one is measured by. Whatever one isn’t measured by, that’s not how one is classified.So a Buddha isn't a being, and he isn't measured or classified by anything.>>18465383It's a little weird, yeah. I think you can remove a few uses of "clinging" to make it easier to parse without changing the meaning much:“Monks, you would do well to cling to that doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair. But do you see a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair?”
The Buddha doesn't tell you what you are and then say that thing doesn't really exist. Instead he refuses to tell you what you are and says you shouldn't tell yourself what you are either.
>>18465387I can make it make sense if i enhance it further by changing "there" to "that" and placing it before "which""clinging to that which would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair?"Im going to have to assume this is correct enough cause my brain cant cope otherwise
>>18465340If the "observer" were an object of observation, then it would not be the observer. The observer by definition is not a thing then, since a thing's "thingness" is owed to the fact that it's observable. Observable being a pretty broad definition here, meaning that even thoughts, even mind, by the mere fact you experience them, are observable. Needless to say anything you perceive with the physical sense doors are by definition observable. So what is not observable? There is not any thing which is not observable, ergo, it's impossible to "find" the observer because what's looking is always antecedent. So then what's behind phenomena, who's behind the looking? There really isn't any thing behind phenomena so there really isn't any one who's looking.
>>18465432>and says you shouldn't tell yourself what you are eitherMaybe that's putting it too strongly, since in Thanissaro's (the dhammatalks translator's) understanding of it, perceptions of self can be skillful provisionally and perceptions of not-self can be unskillful provisionally.https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0012.htmlMaybe that's the point of all the "clinging"s when Buddha is talking about doctrines of self giving rise to sorrow, lamentation, etc. Maybe as long as you don't cling to them, they can be useful. But if you cling to them past their usefulness, you're in for a bad time.
>>18465475As you say, you cant directly look at the observer in the same way you cant directly look at your own face, this much is true. However the observer has an effect on the things that can be observed which is how we know its there.What object is this intangible essence affecting i hear you wonder? The structure of neurons, the idea that there is an "observer" is a physical structure in the brain that would not otherwise be there if the sense of experience didnt exist. The sense of experience has somehow changed the shape of the brain which we can look at and conclude that there is an observerThis is in the same vein as concluding that there is a black hole because some fucky wucky gravity shit is happening at a place it shouldnt
>>18465219Presumption
