>>23609785
It's a religion, what did you expect? However, as religions go, it's one of the better ones since it's not actively harmful to everyone (islam) or just massively turbo-cringe (christianity, judaism, the rest).

Just learn to filter the mystical part, bro

>>>/his/

>>23609802
If you read the suttas, it's literally impossible. You'd filter like 90% of the religion. That's why those "secular buddhists" crack me up. Buddha taught rebirth and a method to end rebirth. The fuck is the point of Buddhism if there's no rebirth?

>>23609794
Well I'm a dumb westerner who absorbed buddhist ideas through osmosis in my culture, where Buddhism is like this tech-bro mindfulness practice that makes your life better or make you more productive at work. Then I come to find out it's basically like this cosmic suicide method to escape rebirth in a horrific universe of endless suffering.

>>23609785
Why not just be a materialist atheist then you don't have to meditate to avoid being reincarnated

>>23609863
Your beliefs are irrelevant to the actual ontology of the world

>>23609864
And you think the truth is found in hundreds/thousands of year old books why?

>>23609864
Not true for materialist atheists since they are a corrupted form of Christianity which transcends natural law

>>23609838
Nirvana isn't suicide, bro

>>23609785
>>want to get into Buddhism
Why? It's just atheism.
>>23609794
>It's a religion
No it's not lol it denies the self

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>>23609785
>Hmm I can't tell if this religion is extremely based, or extremely cringe.
Yeah, I wonder...

>>23609802
>What accords with my opinion is true, the rest is false.
Atheism with additional steps.

>>23609785
>Hmm I can't tell if this religion is extremely based, or extremely cringe.
Did you miss the part about the middle path? Buddhism attempts to be barisnged.

>>23609832
>The fuck is the point of Buddhism if there's no rebirth?
You turn to your phone to check instagram, consciousness is reborn, you open /gif/catalogue with your special filter applied, consciousness is reborn. You die in an awful carcrash and without personality or identity you inspect your remains in the coronial court, consciousness is reborn. Rebirth doesn't include linear time. You are your mother. RIGHT NOW.

And if you think that "external" maya is an illusion, then tell me how an illusory sense data isn't implicit in an ontology of grasping maya? It is thought, it is within the thinker.

>>23609832
Buddhism always merges with indigenous religions wherever it spreads. Sanjiao Heyi in China, Shinto in Japan, etc. Buddhism actually arrived to the west previously in the very distant past, and Buddha was revered as a Christian saint (Barlaam and Josaphat).
Secular materialism is a western folk religious philosophy, and it was inevitable that Buddhism would merge with it.

>>23609785
>117 billion lives till now
>1 passed the test
Yeah I don't buy it.

>>23609936
>you are your mother
it's far too much to bear. The loss of distinction in Buddhism verges on madness.
Christianity is a more human religion insofar as it preserves the familial unit in the form of Father God - Mother Spirit - Blessed Son.
It provides a support system of archetypes and absolutes beyond the self that aid in rebirth, and effect it from without through means of grace. There's the mystical dissolution of self in Christ and the Godperson, of course, but there's also a rich iconography and sensuous liturgical tradition to keep you rooted.
Buddhism is just too austere, I think, to work for anyone but the most ascetic types. It requires too much.
Man needs a midwife to assist in his rebirth process, and the Buddha refuses to assist in that capacity.

>>23609960
It isn't a test, the sexy snake woman trying to rape you just is as illusion.

>>23609966
>familial unit in the form of Father God - Mother Spirit - Blessed Son.
Based heresy.

Can someone please tell me what buddhism actually believes? From all my lurking, it's always two people arguing "no it teaches this, no you're stupid actually it doesn't"
What does it teach is at the most fundamental level of reality?

>>23609966
>dissolution of self in Christ and the Godperson
Based heresy.

>>23609979
Being is suffering.
Suffering comes from attachment to desire.
Deattachment from desire ends suffering.
The 8 fold middle path allows for deattachment from suffering.

>Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration

Mystical shit isn't to be believed in: it exists in consciousness, so it is, but like all other things, it only exists in consciousness.

You're free to believe in stuff if you like, and most buddhists do, because it exists in consciousness.

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>>23609969
It sure is formulated as one. What's an illusion if not a perception test.

>>23609990
>like all other things, it only exists in consciousness
What does this mean? In whose consciousness?

>>23609991
You're treating "test" as if non-illusory.

>>23609785
Sounds like your upset about having the reality of existence pointed out to you.

>>23609999
That would just devolve into self refuting and Hegelian negation of negation shenanigans and no praxis would be equally valid.

>>23609997
>whose
Not demonstrated, extensively debated amongst buddhists. Individuation, personality, they're epiphenomena of consciousness.

Look at Western ontology for a second, the phrase isn't "I think therefore I am," the phrase is "Thinking thus being." Nowhere is the individual or personality underwritten.

Phenomena appear to consciousness as "as-ifs" not as "ises." There is no "real" laying behind the sexy snake woman fucking you, there is just the illusion thereof.

>>23610023
Why does personality appear as an "illusion"? How can you trust knowledge obtained in this "illusory" mode of (apparent) existence?

>>23609832
I read the suttas and the magic shit is just barely there and is never important

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Also what even is the point of debate in Buddhism? How do they arrive at truth?

>>23610049
>>23609802
>filter the mystical part
>never important
Because a westerner in 2024 said so, kek.

>>23610037
>Why does personality appear as an "illusion"?
In a moment of consciousness, often the impression that you exist and possess a personality appears, but simultaneously the refutation of this in the apparent memories of moments of dissolution of personality also appear:

In the phenomenal contradiction of the moment the as-if of "you" is thrust up against the as-if of "not-you" like that time your body shit your pants on you and you had no control over your bowel, or that time you were humiliated to the point of negating your identity. Both are illusions, but both are as-if in that they appear before consciousness. The desire "to-be" an identity or "not-to-be" an identity is part of consciousness, but the attachment creates an intrusive suffering.

>How can you trust knowledge
Let me stop you there. Have a think about that, before considering the situation of trusting knowledge in as-ifs?

(To skip ahead: knowledge is just another as-if phenomena placed in front of being.)

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>>23609785
>lose a sense of self, become calmer, and be happy
the religion

>>23610058
>before considering the situation of trusting knowledge
You trust your knowledge that knowledge is an "as-if"?

>>23609904
You don't go to atheist pagodas and pray to Carl Sagan.

>>23610058
>just assume a retarded godhead bro

>>23609832
>it's all or nothing bro
>take everything we think some guy said over 2 thousand years ago, or take none of it all all
I only read What the Buddha Taught and I don't recall any magic.

>>23610065
>You trust your knowledge that knowledge is an "as-if"?
In a moment of consciousness the as-ifness is derivable from the act of consciousness: knowledge's apparentness falls into the maya of memory. So it's rederivable from scratch in any instant.

>>23610078
>>just assume a retarded godhead bro
If I was raised Pure Land I'd be a happier chap.

All buddhist discussion devolves into meaningless gibberish. Could you please stop writing like schizo fags for just a few moments?

>>23609870
What makes you think Christianity is the truth and not a psyop? Also what will you do the first 500,000 years in your eternal heaven? Curious.

>>23610093
These threads were great just a few years ago. Not sure what changed. Maybe the learned Buddhist posters got on with their lives.

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You know, though, almost everything about Buddhism is legit until the anti-natalist, anti-existence, anti-life, anti-creation cope.
Is life an illusion or a dream of matter that happens to come together and take shape in the form of self-aware man? Yeah, sure, I'm with you there. With the whole laws of the universe and action-and-reaction and infinity and cyclical and rebirth thing. I can even believe tales from the beyond as this clump of shared experience, ego lacking, takes the ultimate form of Awareness and transcends its own state.
But why does the Messiah come back from Nihil just to say this out loud, to berate others for not believing, to use this knowledge to his advantage in brief life, all while failing to leave back any real and tangible answers? That's some scam artist, cult leader shit. I'm with you on the setting, not quite on the development. It's easier to believe in a god that saw the uneventfulness of Nothingness and decided to create from it experience, no matter if every waking moment comes at a cost. Because then I can at least believe he and I share something, and there's tangible, unknottable structure to every layer of being.

>>23609973
>>23609983
I could do without the hair-splitting, certainly, but what religion doesn't have its pedants? At least the Christian pedants have rich source material that somewhat warrants pedantry, whereas buddhist "scholarship" seems like a pretty blatant oxymoron, given the central tenets.

>>23609785
>it's to die just like an atheist materialist thinks happens when he dies- permanent cessation of consciousness
Since you read so much of the Pali Canon, I'm sure you'll be able to post evidence for this claim. You're not just telling lies so you can shitpost, are you...?

>>23610093
Impossible, since even the scaffolding to be able to discuss such topic is denied of actuality.
It speaks volumes that for something so centered around illusions, truth is of no importance.

>>23610097
>Maybe the learned Buddhist posters got on with their lives.
As one of those, one of the first things you realize with these types of "discussion" is that people are either interested in learning or they're not and if they're not, there's absolutely nothing you can do. Buddhism is not an evangelical religion and I have no personal stake in convincing bitter, hostile people to give happiness a chance. They're simply not ready for it at this point in their spiritual journey and they can't be forced into it. Perhaps they have another few thousand rebirths to go before they'll be ready to consider it but whatever the case, there's no point in wasting time trying to engage with people who are just here to start fights.


>>23609979
>What does it teach is at the most fundamental level of reality?
Buddhism is generally not concerned with questions like this. The Buddha regularly chastised his followers for asking him questions about the nature of reality and so forth because they're irrelevant to religious practice. Properly practicing Buddhism is an extremely intense, full-time job. The ideal is to have excruciatingly precise awareness of even the slightest mental activity and if you're spending your time worrying about the structure of the universe or whatever then you're not devoting the proper attention to practice.

>>23610094
>500,000 years
There is no flow of time in the eschaton the same way there is today, time will come to its completion.

>>23610088
>knowledge's apparentness falls into the maya of memory.
What does it mean? I don't think I understood your answer, why are you trusting that your path is leading you towards what is given that you are experiencing everything in a conditioned/"illusory" way?

>>23609785
And the Bible said that Jesus Christ could walk on water and was the literal son of God.
Do you believe that interpretation, or the one about how to live a good life and spiritually improve humanity?

>>23610149
>What does it mean?
Knowledge appears before thought as memory. Memory is maya.

>why are you trusting that your path is leading you
I don't. In any moment I can observe the 4 truths *from that moment.* They're freshly derivable from being's inspection of itself. Being being suffering, suffering being desire, suffering being illusion: they're all instantly derivable, *even if all phenomena are illusion.*

Also, the 8 fold path's "right" shouldn't be seen as "moral." Step over that starving child.

>>23609832
Born into Samsara
Experience suffering
Focus on Enlightenment
Enter Nirvana
Cessation of all Suffering
Experience Bliss
Bliss turns to Boredom
Boredom turns to Suffering
Samsara takes its shape
Wake up in Samsara
Experience Suffering
Focus on Enlightenment
Enter Nirvana...

You cannot escape the cycle of samsara by entering nirvana, for you will find that you've entered Samsara. Walk the line, like a tightrope; attain balance, and one won't fall down, or up. It's the same direction.

>>23610137
>Buddhism is generally not concerned with questions like this.
So whatever I can interact with here is just a larp detached from the real tradition, I guess it makes sense then anon. I never understood why buddhists debate on 4chan but your post shines some light.
>The Buddha regularly chastised his followers for asking him questions about the nature of reality and so forth because they're irrelevant to religious practice.
Would you say the focus on debates is somewhat of a corruption of original buddhism?

>>23610163
>instantly derivable
How? Why is that not part of maya?

>>23610150
>Do you believe that interpretation
Yes.
>live a good life and spiritually improve humanity
Those are impossible without believing in Christ.

>>23610137
>bitter, hostile people
Most of them aren't they just don't believe (in reason) in a bitter, hostile god that creates unwillingly things. And that the path is the denial of all observable law.
>Buddhism is generally not concerned with questions like this.
No frame of reference, vaporware and self defeating. No better than dmt machine elves or silicon valley matrix enthusiasts religion that assumes a retarded or maleficent godhead.

>>23610172
>How? Why is that not part of maya?
It doesn't matter if it is maya or not, because being in the moment can observe it, and the observation comes out the same:

"Something is thinking, and its shit:" Being is suffering
"If only I knew how to derive knowledge:" Suffering arises from attachment to desire.
"You know, this state is contingent:" attached suffering isn't necessary
"Maybe if I weren't so attached to epistemologies of knowledge…"

Its a bootstrap you can demonstrate anywhere.

>>23610167
I dont know why anon said that. Buddhism comprehensively addresses the fundamental questions directly. It's central to Guatama's teachings. Anon is confused.

Buddhism teaches that everything derives from nothing, the infinite, unknowable, unspeakable expanse; the mystery. We in the west tend to call it God. New Agers call it Source. Taoists call it the Tao. Star Wars calls it the Force. You have it breathing out of your lungs, you know it so well that when you try to know it, you stop knowing it.

All matter originates within a context of conditional existence. Laws, limits, parameters are placed upon Everything and Nothing, thus, Something is generated within "here," instead of "everywhere." Infinity puts a limit upon some part of itself, so that mathematics takes shape. Mathematics starts calculating itself, which produces visible forms. Visible forms start assembling into higher order macrophenomena; Buddhism calls this dependent origination, or dependent arising; out of wholly independent infinity, limited finiteness starts generating itself, dependent upon its limits. But if you've ever seen Mean Girls, this all takes place within infinity, so just remember: the limit does not exist.

And that's meditation and nirvana. Remembering, "the limit does not exist." One must still exist within samsara, if one wants to exist, so if one tries to live as if the limit doesn't exist, they'll meet with their own limitations. Pretending fire doesn't burn won't save anyone. But remembering that in the grand scheme, this is all a dream, helps produce equanimity and tranquility. It also destroys delusional argument in favor of harmful practices. Now all one is left with is compassion, and effectiveness.

Buddhism addresses metaphysical ideas in their totality.

>>23610177
Many people believe in Christ and go on to commit horrible atrocities, or, just don't do much of anything. Many people believe in things other than Christ, and do much good, and bring humanity back into balance for a time.
I think if you had asked Jesus if one must believe in him to be saved, he'd ask why you were following him around. He's just a man.

>>23610192
>can observe it
It's just observing maya.
>Being is suffering
I don't observe this.

>force that punishes you for... making a living via witchcraft
which verse was this? I believe that it exists but any source, primary or not, would be appreciated

>>23610205
>Many people believe in Christ
Actions are a fruit of correct belief. Many will claim they believe, but they believed in a distorted heresy instead of what Christ taught.
>and do much good
I don't believe in a good that is detached from Christ.

>>23610216
>they believed in a distorted heresy instead of what Christ taught.
I agree. Foremost among these is, "There is only salvation through belief in Jesus Christ."
You believe in a vicious campaign of murder and enmity, not in what Jesus taught. Ask me how I know.

>>23610211
>It's just observing maya.
>I don't observe this.

>>23610214
>which verse was this?
Karma.

>>23610167
>So whatever I can interact with here is just a larp detached from the real tradition
To a good extent, yes. Much of the criticism you see here of "Western Buddhists" is very accurate. There many people who have developed some very strange ideas and beliefs based around an incorrect or at least incomplete understanding of Buddhism and, unfortunately, these types seem to be the ones who will most authoritatively give lectures on "real Buddhism".

>Would you say the focus on debates is somewhat of a corruption of original buddhism?
The Buddha's teachings were extremely thorough and precise and there's not much to debate as far as his meaning is concerned. Attempting to clarify the teachings for people with incorrect understandings is one thing but there's no reason to get dragged into actual debates, especially in a place like this where the vast majority of people attempting to argue against Buddhism are not doing so in good faith.

>>23610224
>"There is only salvation through belief in Jesus Christ."
Yes.
>Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
>You believe in a vicious campaign of murder and enmity
I don't even know how you deduced this, how do I believe in this?

>>23610225
>>I don't observe this.
Is my observation of being not being suffering an illusion, but yours of it being suffering isn't?

>>23610228
I've read a basic book detailing karma
>Isolate others and you will be isolated in turn
>be unfaithful and your partners will cheat on you in turn
>inflict violence and your life will be short, this or the next
Humor me, as I simply want some of the context regarding certain alleged abilities. Those texts are always more specific than a westerner expects

>>23610200
>Buddhism teaches that everything derives from nothing
I don't want to sound dismissive, but it sounds like a literal soijack platitude. What is meant by nothing and everything? Why do you think this is the same as what we call God, as if that is a word that means the same thing to all people in the first place.

>>23610242
>nothing and everything?
Mathematically speaking, this would be called "infinity."
Now, try to calculate infinity. Difficult, no?
Using words instead of numbers, try to describe infinity. Difficult, no?
Now you see why mysticism exists. Everything & Nothing.
Sophisticated theologians in the West interpret God as the Infinite. Of course, plebs often believe God is something like their dad hanging our drinking brewskis in Heaven and watching the Game, but, the Bible repeatedly tells you what God is.
>alpha and omega
>beginning and the end
>the creator of all darkness and all light
>in the beginning there was God and nothing else
>everything and nothing
>the first and the last
God is the Infinite. Biblically supported!

>>23610234
You're observing Maya, but you're not observing the shadow it casts? Noice1.

>>23609960
Yeah it's too convenient, fails the sniff test.

>>23610241
Sit under a tree and fuck the snake my man.

>>23610231
>it's my way, or the highway
>what I say goes
It was easily deduced. Everyone who doesn't believe in what you believe in, must perish and pay for their sins. It's your logical M.O.
>>23610241
Its not anything magical. Karma is cause and effect. You act, and it starts making things move.

>>23610242
Dalai Lama says the universe doesn't necessarily have a creator but exists from the karmic potentiality of its inhabitants, or something like that. I'm pretty sure Buddhists believe in an eternal or repeating universe. Some sort of omniscient God thing existing in this worldview isn't necessarily impossible but I don't think he would mind either way if you worshiped him or not.

>>23610051
Debate isn't the point. That would be for splitting hairs and dancing in circles with ego. The principle idea, at least with zen, is to quiet your mind and observe yourself until the truth dawns on you. The rest is methods and elucidations on how to do this. That's all.
You can debate how a nail should be hammered until the wall is no longer there, or you can hammer it for yourself and find out.

>>23610256
>Mathematically speaking, this would be called "infinity."
Mathematically there is no well-defined notion of 'infinity', only infinite towers of Grothendieck universes or equivalent notions. How is mathematical infinity 'nothing'?
>the Bible repeatedly tells you what God is
How did you know to choose those parts and ignore other parts where it speaks about God becoming flesh and dwelling among us and dying on the cross?

>>23610266
I didn't ask if karma is magical, or even real. I asked for the specific text mentioning it.
>>23610214
>>23610214
Let me restate the question:
Where is the alleged text that describes "the mystical force" (karma) that punishes people "making a living via witchcraft" (per OP's text).

I'm not here to argue anything I just want the passage.

>>23610266
>Everyone who doesn't believe in what you believe in
It's not about my belief, but about believing in what Jesus Christ taught. The problem is that people don't want to believe it but endlessly invent heresies which are demonstrably self-contradictory and/or ahistorical/justifiable only subjectively by the individual heretic.

>>23610284
Karma is mentioned in every buddhist text.

>>23610051
In Buddhism you're supposedly allowed to question anything. I think this means
>Outside of the monastery you get vague answers
>Inside the monastery you get beaten for asking dumb questions
I could be wrong though

>>23610290
blatantly false
I have a buddhist text and it never mentioned witchcraft, unless you count meditating about dying

>>23610280
>how is mathematical infinity "nothing?"
Idk, the Mayans came up with zero, and decided to represent it using a cypher. Probably a completely random choice on their part since they were retarded ape people. Right?
>no well defined notion
Mhmmmm.
>God becoming flesh and blah blah blah
Do you have flesh rn? Do you come from God?
Do you know how to read? Do you know how to interpret what you read?

297--+;+;+
GREENLIGHT GO. ALPHA BRAVO MOONLIGHT.
KEEP DIGGING -- Q

>>23610286
Christianity included, which not only disregards his words but twists them to their own means, a corruption of self interest. Treachery, you might say.

>>23609960
>>23610262
Buddhist cosmology is cyclical and infinite and the universe goes through endless cycles of growth and decline. The man we refer to as the Buddha is just the most recent person to have realized certain truths. His teachings will eventually be forgotten, as they have been countless times in the past, and they will remain forgotten until a new Buddha discovers them once again.

>>23610299
Karma isn't witchcraft, it's physics. Idk wtf that other anon is even talking about. The Pali Canon is allegorical.
>>23610286
What did Jesus Christ teach?

>>23610304
>disregards his words but twists them to their own means
You don't know what He taught and said apart from Christianity, everything else is a subjectivistic system that tries to reinterpret texts assuming their own system is truth and somehow trying to reconcile it with Christianity.

>>23610309
>What did Jesus Christ teach?
The teaching we have in the Orthodox Church is what Christ taught. Every other system that tries to include the Bible into itself is self-contradictory and can't explain it coherently.

>>23610306
And then his followers will cry about his death and write a fanfic explaining how he was the son of a Cool Dude named God who is the King of Earth, and if you don't ritualistically drink his blood and say his name until he comes back to have a dance contest with Ozzy Osbourne at the end of time (??????) you'll be fucked. Also, anyone who doesn't believe this either has to be genocided from the earth or looked down upon as ignorant. Also, electroshock therapy for gays and women are evil

Thats the Jesus/Buddha I know!

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>>23610303
I doubt this meltdown of meaningless gibberish is somehow a part of the Buddha's teaching.

>>23610314
>my way or the highway
And we have come full circle, mein fuhrer. Try to leave some alive though. Jesus would prefer that.

>>23610325
I'm just having fum.

>>23610310
Plenty of your own scripture actively contradicts him but says it's just different when they say to do it.

>>23610309
Karma is a very inconsistent and illogical (even within Buddhistic metaphysics) doctrine. And if we go by physical allegory, we may ascribe to the credit of karma the same credit older physicists ascribed to obscure powers.

>>23610330
>Jesus would prefer that.
You don't know this because you refuse to believe His words about the gates of hell not prevailing against the Church. Your whole idea of Christ is manufactured based on your perennialistic presuppositions about Orthodoxy being wrong.

>>23610341
>contradicts him
It contradicts people's false interpretations (that are based on nothing but their subjectivism/modernist beliefs). Our system of knowledge and interpretation of Holy Scripture is self-consistent.

my mistake for thinking anyone ITT knew what they were talking about. I guess I have to do the research myself

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>>23610333
I don't know what's fun about it, to me debating in truth is fun, watching anime is fun, but not evading meaningful questions.

>>23610259
I am challenging the Buddhist presupposition of "being is suffering".

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It's normally projecting Hadou or force on environment, by reaching B'riah plane

>>23610200

Do Buddhists agree on something, or is it debates all the way down? Do they agree on the nature of 'Nothing'?
In this way it reminds me of Islam which claims to have core tenets, but almost everything metaphysical is up for grabs.

>>23610342
Yeah cause and effect is so illogical. Lmao
>>23610343
And yours is totally manufactured based on your presuppositions about orthodoxy being right. We all make bets, but I use educated guesses to make mine. Not weird books speaking for someone else who died thousands of years ago...telling me to drink blood.
>hey you guys should try being nice and stop listening to people who aren't nice, also stop fighting with one another it holds you back
>2000 years later
>WE DRINK OF HIS BLOOD AND EAT OF HIS FLESH, MAY THE SINNERS BE DAMNED TO HELL!!!!!!!!!
Humans.exe has crashed, please try restarting the program

>>23610354
I dont think the truth is debatable, by definition. I'm not really debating. More like, "prodding."
But many Buddhists do seem to quibble. Guatama used to just smile at this, understanding that it was worthless.

>>23610361
Every set of ideas has debate within, but a large contingent of Buddhists realize that "nothing" is the ineffable unknowable, that which cannot be apprehended, so they accept rather than try to know it.
Most esoteric traditions with any weight behind them, do this.

>>23610365
>based on your presuppositions about orthodoxy being right.
Correct, the question is if this is a better/non-self-contradictory presupposition than the perennialst one.
>Not weird books speaking for someone else who died thousands of years ago..
That's not what we teach, we have direct connection with Christ because the Holy Spirit is living in the Church. The lives of the saint are the fruit that shows us what is really meant by a holy life not based on our own ideas. Your bet is a weak one because it's self-contradictory and subjectivist, you pick and choose what's convenient from the truth without accepting the fullness of it.
>>2000 years later
That teaching is already in the New Testament and the early church fathers.

>>23610365
Karma is not only cause and effect, it is a specific qualified form of cause effect, and it is in this qualitative feature that Karma is bogus.

>>23610386
No, its literally cause and effect. In its totality.

>>23609785
Wtf now i love Buddism

>>23610374
>Guatama used to just smile at this, understanding that it was worthless.
I can respect him then, I wonder how they know they are reaching at the same truth taught by Gautama?
>>23610378
>Buddhists realize that "nothing" is the ineffable unknowable, that which cannot be apprehended, so they accept rather than try to know it.
I see, for us this would most closely map to the essence of God, but the key difference is that it's fundamentally connected to personhood.

>>23610381
Yes I understand you have a dogma. And I understand what you believe about others who don't share that dogma. And I understood what christ taught about dogma, and about people. Its all good man, you do you. Jesus knows I could never stop you anyway.

>>23610397
>I understood what christ taught about dogma
How? The New Testament is "corrupt", how did you know to choose the correct parts?

>>23610396
Exactly. Which is why I think Buddhism is more comprehensive than Abrahamism. It detaches the infinite from an anthropomorphic perspective, which logically, is definitely more accurate.
But to be fair to the west, the mystic traditions in the secret orders have always spoken about this through Abrahamic lenses. This is what kaballah is about too in many ways, and esoteric Christian orders.

And yeah, the Buddha was a champ and master troll. Once, a man came to sidhartha, and said, eureka, I've got it! To reach nirvana, I've got to commit, I must become a monk! Buddha smiled, and the man took this as an affirmation and joined the monastery. A farmer saw this, and approached Guatama. He said, but Buddha, you told me last week that I could remain a farmer and still attain enlightenment. Guatama said, I never answered that man either way. If he thinks he needs to be a monk, then that's what he needs to do. If you think you need to be a farmer, then that's what you need to do. I am just smiling.

Buddha also said, once, about enlightenment...he was asked how to reach it. He replied, one has attained enlightenment when they no longer desire anything, including attainment of enlightenment.

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I have a question for Buddhists, did Gautama ever teach to worship any spirits? How is the magic stuff mentioned in the OP relevant to escaping suffering? If anything it would seem that those powers would detract from one's path.

>>23610392
What cause and effect law avers that depending on my mental state, my killing of an animal, an insect may accrue a specific situation in life/consciousness instead of purely physical changes in what was affected by the relation of the law?

>>23610399
How did you?

>>23610410
Quantum mechanics directly says this through the principles of entanglement and the uncertainty principle. All is connected, and you can never be sure how and where.

>>23610409
>I have a question for Buddhists, did Gautama ever teach to worship any spirits? How is the magic stuff mentioned in the OP relevant to escaping suffering? If anything it would seem that those powers would detract from one's path.
If you're fucking a snake, its pretty magic.

>>23610409
>If anything it would seem that those powers would detract from one's path.
They do and there are parts of the suttas where he specifically cautions against being sidetracked by any supernatural powers you may develop via advanced meditative practices.

>>23609785
>endless rebirth through all the realms of existence is ultimately terrible and full of suffering and its false ideas of genuine good that keeps people bound up to samsara in endless suffering
This but unironically

>>23610408
>Abrahamism
There is no such thing, it's a modernist invention. Islam teaches different metaphysics, epistemology, etc, same with Judaism.
> which logically, is definitely more accurate.
This presupposes a certain form of logic already inherent in Buddhism, why should we posit the illusory nature of personhood? Why is it more 'logical'?

>But to be fair to the west, the mystic traditions in the secret orders have always spoken about this through Abrahamic lenses. This is what kaballah is about too in many ways, and esoteric Christian orders.
I think this is quite a reductionist view where you presume to know more about the orders and their beliefs than even the believers, it's what perennialists do to hand wave any real contradictions between the teachings. Funnily enough this analysis always breaks down when they agree that Orthodoxy is a 'mystical' form of Chrisitanity, examining its beliefs really shows that Orthodox esoteric teachings are tied inseparably to everything else in the system.

>>23610414
The thing is that I don't believe it's corrupt because of faith in Christ. I accept the fullness of revelation without choosing anything. Faith is necessary for full knowledge, logic is only useful to attack falsehoods.

>>23610409
disclaimer: not a buddhist but I think I grasp it better than most people for having read a few relevant books.
> Gautama ever teach to worship any spirits?
I don't think so. In general Buddhists deny worshiping any gods or spirits but there are kooky local variations of Buddhism that have incorporated animism or other lore.
> How is the magic stuff mentioned in the OP relevant to escaping suffering?
If you do bad shit, you get punished. Karma isn't a cosmic credit score like some westerners believe. Rather specific infractions are punished in turn by being on the receiving end of something similar. Murder someone young and in your next life you may be murdered while very young. Being greedy means others while withhold from you in your time of need, and so on. Your actions have consequences and they might come about in this life, the afterlife (realms of heaven and hell exist in Buddhism), or your reborn life. On the other hand, if you live a virtuous life you may be able to choose where you are reborn, into good circumstances. You may spend some time in paradise, but the afterlife usually isn't for all time (a principle departure from Christianity.) It might seem like there's a karmic cycle, do bad, someone does something bad to you, things get worse and worse, but "being the better man" is the way to dig yourself out of such a hole. Anyways the monks don't have much chance to do people harm and that's the point of the life they lead.
>it would seem that those powers
If you're talking about the "living through witchcraft" thing I want answers too. I asked earlier but only morons responded

>>23610429
This is what I have heard advaitins teach too. Are those texts about Gautama cited in the OP accepted by Buddhists generally? How do they explain this?

>>23610436
Because true infinity would not revolve around man, which is a finite piece of it. By definition.
And they don't calm it abrahmism because of similar metaphysics, it's because it all follows the same plot line and that plot begins with Abraham.

>>23610453
Yes exactly. You have a dogma based on blind faith. That's fine, I don't care. But it is limiting.

>>23610461
>Because true infinity would not revolve around man, which is a finite piece of it. By definition.
But we don't believe personhood is specific to man nor that infinity revolves around man, rather that the Holy Trinity is at the base of reality and human personhood is a creation.
>it's because it all follows the same plot line and that plot begins with Abraham.
Wouldn't those be exoteric datum even under the perennialst view? The content of the teachings would be more important and they teach a fundamentally different ontology.

>>23610478
Personhood is still a categorical label even if it is not applied to man. Categories are perceptual limits. Infinity is limitless.

>>23610467
>blind faith
It's not blind faith, it involves the rational mind as well, it just gives it its proper place and does not blindly trust the rational mind.
>limiting
In what way? Because it doesn't allow you to pick and choose your view of reality based on your fallen condition?

>>23610478
And yes, they would be exoteric datum, and the content of teachings is definitely more important, but none of these religions preach a fundamentally different ontology except within their exoteric dogmas. Which is what you seem to be having a glitch in confronting.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all say that the Infinite created everything. Buddhism says everything arose out of infinity. This is the same ontological principle.

>>23610224
>>23610266
>Everyone who doesn't believe in what you believe in, must perish and pay for their sins.

i know this is a Buddhism thread but that is a wildly inaccurate view of Christian theology, that's not how it works at all. How it really works is that as a result of The Fall, man is now a flawed and fallen creature because HE CHOOSES darkness over light, over his own needs and wants than God's in the Garden. This is why pride is the 1st and highest sin, Adam and Eve thought they knew better

this is important, because now that man knows good and evil, man CONTINUES to choose evil over good. Remember, God does NOT want evil, but PERMITS evil, because he also wants us to be free and not slavish robots. If a group of people all put their hands on hot stove, they cannot complain that the stove company burned them. They did it to themselves.

In the same way as a result of sin, man enters hell because people in hell, want to be in hell. As CS Lewis said, the door of hell is locked from the inside. So no, you cannot say that God is personally and directly sending people to hell, he just permits them to send themselves to hell, because people are fallen, and many would rather go to hell than be in heaven.

source: John 3:19

>19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

>>23610487
No because it makes you believe in inaccuracies that add to harm in the world which is sad because I've no doubt your intentions are good. It's a waste of those intentions.

>>23610485
>Infinity is limitless.
Hypostatis is still an ineffable notion, divine personhood is ineffable and there is nothing you can say about God without revelation. We just don't believe God is only ineffable, His actions which are distinct but not separated from the Divine essence can be known by man.
>>23610491
>none of these religions preach a fundamentally different ontology
Islam believes in Tawhid, i.e. fundamental unity without distinctions in God. We do believe in the Holy Trinity and the distinction between God's actions and God's essence.
>Infinite created everything.
We have different understandings of 'Infinite', 'created' and 'everything'.

>>23610495
Yeah that's all exactly the same as what buddhism says about samsara except for the whole "God wanting" thing which is ridiculous considering the scope of infinity. But the Fall and all that, the choosing is just samsara. It's all the same shit. Until you get dogmatic with it, then it becomes a fanfic and starts manifesting as the satirical description I gave.
Or, did Christians for thousands of years NOT say and do things like I described? Did Marjorie Taylor Green say she saw an angel appear and save Trump and everyone clapped, or no that didn't happen?

When you believe in things, that you don't understand, creates a prooooo0o0o0blemmmmzz....SUPAHstitiaint the way

>>23610497
No, the Bible doesn't have different understandings of these things at all. Infinity can't be relativistic. That's your misinterpretation, based on your dogma. I agree. But the Bible doesn't teach your dogma if one reads it. Neither did Jesus lol

>>23610496
>believe in inaccuracies
Fallen man is a slave to inaccuracies because he is affected by the fall and his rational mind is sick. You have no correct reference for the full truth outside of someone untainted by the fall revealing it to you, i.e. the incarnate Logos. If your organs/methods of gaining knowledge are sick, you can't be healed just by practicing abstract thoughts with these broken means of knowledge without a change of your being.

>>23610506
Change is the only constant. My being changes every second. So does yours

>>23610504
>doesn't have different understandings of these things at all
Why should I trust your subjectivistic incoherent reading instead of the Apostles and Church Fathers who debated these exact differences with other faiths for all of the existence of the Church.
>Bible doesn't teach your dogma
And it does teach your self-contradictory ahistorical dogma.. why?

>>23610321
Return to R*ddit.

>>23610242
>>23609979
>Can someone please tell me what buddhism actually believes? From all my lurking, it's always two people arguing "no it teaches this, no you're stupid actually it doesn't"
>What does it teach is at the most fundamental level of reality?

From my admittedly limited understanding:

(1/3)
The core point of Buddhism is liberation from suffering (which, suffering, is held to be based on the wheel of desires/the search for pleasures and satisfaction, from the subtle to the gross levels), and which liberation, on the basic level of the Four Noble Truths, is held to come about from the cessation of this crude desiring-tendency in oneself.

Furthermore, though, in Buddhism this liberation is as also portrayed as overcoming false ideas about the nature of selfhood and reality, & by meditative practicing and insights, certain crucial insights (or a core fundamental insight) commonly translated in English as simply “enlightenment”.

>What does it teach is at the most fundamental level of reality?
As another anon intelligently explained, the Buddha, as recorded in the Pali Canon, actually says he is not there to answer such wide sweeping ontological, metaphysical, and existential queries, and in fact even claims that it’s useless to or potentially even detrimental and distracting from the search for liberation from suffering.

In Mahayana, however, a common answer to this question (“What is at the most fundamental level of reality?”) is emptiness, voidness, or sunyata. This is not entirely far from or out of line with the usage of this phrase (sunya, or empty, the adjective form of sunyata) more commonly used as an adjective in the Pali Canon:

>The Pāli Canon uses the term śūnyatā("emptiness") in three ways: "(1) as a meditative dwelling, (2) as an attribute of objects, and (3) as a type of awareness-release."

This is not, as commonly misinterpreted, an absurd claim of nihilism or non-existence. In the Pali Canon, right from the start, the Gautama Buddha repeatedly says his teaching is apart from the extremes of both nihilism and eternalism. (Nihilism would be the denial or negation of everything, but also would include claims that consciousness disappears entirely after death, as defined in the Pali Canon, whereas eternalism would be like the philosophy to be found in the Vedas and Upanishads, whether as claims of an eternal God or Brahman, or claims of an eternal Self that also survives death and has even stayed the same since the beginning of time and space, or even prior to it, eternally so).

The claim specifically is that so-called things, and also what you call ‘yourself’ (or what I would call ‘I’) are empty of an intrinsic own-nature, own-being, essence, or self-hood (Pali: svabhava). It’s like an inversion of Platonism (where there are things like “the Form of the chair”, “the Form of the soul”, “the Form of the circle”, “the Form of the good”, etc.).

>>23610510
>Change is the only constant.
If this is so, you can never arrive at an unchanging truth and are just spouting incoherent nonsense.

>>23610504
>Infinity can't be relativistic.
Infinite cannot be, but people can wrongly claim many things to be infinity.

>>23609979
>>23610515
(2/3)
This is also linked with the Buddha’s teaching of dependent origination, also variously translated as dependent arising, or even loosely as interdependent origination or arising, which is “Pratītyasamutpāda” as taught in the Pali Canon.

>It states that all dharmas (phenomena) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist". The basic principle is that all things (dharmas, phenomena, principles) arise in dependence upon other things.

To make what might sound like a trite New Agey parable, we could say a tree is dependent upon other facts, dharmas, things or phenomena like the air and sky around it, the soil it arises in, the water, the sunlight, and its origins as a seed or acorn, going back in a long chain to its own tree ancestors and their own dependent phenomena they arose from but also contributed to and changed, etc. To Buddhists, it appears they would say that really there is no clear dividing-line between “tree” and “non-tree”, the point where “tree” ends and “non-tree” begins.

Now, for teachings like Vedanta, or monistic forms of spirituality and metaphysics generally, this interdependence and inter-reliance of everything existing upon everything else existing could easily be taken to justify the claim that, “All is one.” But the Buddhists would find even this claim untenable, naive, and improperly reductionistic. Hence the Zen saying, “All things are reducible to one, but what is this one reducible to?”

One simple reason for which is that claiming all is one implies some unchanging nature or essence behind it all, when experience shows us that things are constantly in flux and changing, both ourselves and phenomena. Buddhism tends more towards process philosophy, as named in Western scholarship and applied to thinkers from Heraclitus to Whitehead.

One way astute interpreters of Buddhism have put this is as, “There is no ‘seer’ and no thing ‘seen’, only the reality of seeing. There is no ‘perceiver’ and no thing ‘perceived’, only the reality of perceiving. There is no ‘observer’ and no thing ‘observed’, only the truth of ‘observing’”. If you ever worked with or studied schools of thought like those of Korzbyski’s General Semantics, or the inspired school of E-Prime based on Korzbyski’s thought (viz., a school claiming any forms of words like “be” or “exist”, such as “being”, “is”, “existence”, “exists”, “existed”, “was”, etc., should not be used in language and instead operational verbs should be used stressing how any claim depends on the speaker or on perception), you could start getting in line with some of the Buddhist mentality.

>>23610459
>Are those texts about Gautama cited in the OP accepted by Buddhists generally?
OP is mixing truth and lies because he wanted to start a fight and there's a reason why he didn't actually cite anything, just said
>hey guys i definitely read the canon and here's what it said

>How do they explain this?
They generally accept that he did have supernatural powers and that it is possible, if rare, to develop supernatural powers via advanced meditation. I have met some extremely serious, rational, down to earth monks who have said that they met monks with supernatural powers while they were living in monasteries in Thailand.

I remember sitting in a question and answer session with the Abbot of a Western Theravada monastery and someone asking him about these passages and if he himself had developed any superpowers. He gave the sort of response the Buddha gives in the suttas; that yes it's possible but it's basically a rare side effect and it's not something you should expect nor something you should spend any time on. Certainly not something you should have as a goal of your meditation practice. He said that he personally had never developed any but had known a couple people who he believed had.

>>23610504
>Orthodox monk: Islam teaches X and we teach Y
>Shia/Sunni Imam: Yes, that is indeed so, let us debate.
>Modern Deracinated Westoids: NOOOOOO THE BIBLE DOESN'T HAVE DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDINGS OF THESE THINGS AT ALL!!!!

>>23610141
What will it look like to you? Longer than your life? Shorter?

>>23609979
>>23610515
>>23610522
(3/3)
Instead of, “The sky ‘is’ blue”, you’d have, “The sky ‘seems’ blue”, etc. (Personally, I find E-Prime not really an entirely worthwhile thing to make oneself adhere to, and many Buddhists would probably agree, as the Buddhists have their doctrine of “two truths”, where there is an ultimate truth and a conventional truth, and conventional truth is useful for functioning and communicating in the ordinary world and day-to-day life, even if it is ultimately superseded by ultimate truth).

Another way some of this has been expressed by astute interpreters and thinkers is as subject-object nonduality, where both so-called “subject” and so-called “object” are mutually interdependent on each other, hence mutually wiping each other out and leaving only an indefinable isness that could be called emptiness; or variously, in Buddhist thought and literature, dharmata (the nature of dharmas or things, lit. dharma-ness or thingness), Bhutatathata (the tathata, suchness, of bhuta, substance, hence the suchness of substance or reality), Tathata (suchness, thusness), and so forth.

“Isness” itself is difficult of defining, or as Heidegger says, “Being itself is not a being.” It is empty of the ordinary qualities, traits, or descriptions which we conventionally think make something a “being”. An insight which, among other of his insights, rightfully has had scholars compare important aspects of his thought to Zen and Taoist thought, or Buddhism more generally.

So, to put it more simply and concisely, to answer, “What does it teach is at the most fundamental level of reality?”, we could return again to Bodhidharna’s answers: “Vast emptiness, nothing sacred.” Silly dogmatic traditionalists of course can claim to “refute” Zen as “not real Buddhism”, but in fact the truth stands that Zen in itself is a particularly pure, concise, accurate and beautiful form of Buddhism, the ultimate condensation of its insights, and in fact could even be called an eternal teaching that stands beyond even Buddhism, having arisen with the beginning of the universe and existing even after its demise and for potential other universes and inhabitants. The real Zen is timeless and not based on a Japanese or Chinese cultural identity, as Bodhidharma, “the barbarian who came from the West”, would affirm.

>>23610543
It will the be the end goal/telos of creation, both in general and of your specific person, but movement and free will as such will not stop, you will forever be choosing the infinite attributes of God and becoming more like Him.
I don't know if it will seem "longer" per se, but I think some saints mentioned that this life will seem insignificant, it's very hard to imagine. Here we sense things as long because we want something to happen and it still hasn't, but then there will be no waiting.

>>23610500
ah but the key distinction between Christian and Buddhist is also in how salvation or nibbana is achieved: For Christians, it is a grace, it is given, it is not earned and it is not taken. In this life you simply have to do your best and be faithful, and God will take care of it in the end, he will judge you, you cannot will yourself to heaven in any way whatsoever, as even the Pope is subject to God's judgement

in Buddhism, enligthenment is something you kind of have to work on, something you work towards, in a way, you earn, you have walked the path, you have made it. It is a completely different dynamic between receiving something and getting there yourself

as for "God wanting" not making sense, i ask why it does not make sense to you. God is not some inanimated force or object, he is a living entity, that is why we say, the Living God. He has sentience, in fact, more sentience than we have as individuals. Perhaps this is another key difference: The Buddhist may see the world as more agnostic or deist approach, seeing that things are just here or supposing things are just that, and moving on, focus on enlightenment

for the Christian, God is a living, breathing, active relationship, and his grace can be found while living every day if one is faithful

>>23610535
So the different religious texts are expressions of a racial belief system and not of divine truths?

>>23610519
What is infinity?

>>23610516
Thats paradoxically true and untrue. For example, "change is the only constant," itself implies what you're saying, but is also an unchanging truth.

>>23610535
lol meanwhile in Christianity
>WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE TRINITY MEANS BUT WE HAVE ALL AGREED (after many dead heretics) THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND IT AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOU WILL BE BURNED ALIVE AT THE STAKE
they stopped burning people but pastors get hard cocks if they get to denounce someone as a heretic. that's why people avoid them

>>23610560
What convinces you this is the case?

>>23610636
>noooo we have to be able to understand as humans 100% of everything in our feeble little brains otherwise it's not le rational

if anything a God we can fully understand is hardly a God at all. The Trinity is as humbling as it is true. Matthew 28 verse 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"

>>23610614
Yes, it's an anthropomorphization. A living breathing relationship, like what you'd have with another human, or another sentient being. But also no, Christianity and buddhism teach almost identical things about the path. Christianity claims you'll only be rewarded through God's grace, meaning a process that one cannot gain any real insight to. The best path forward from that is to live humbly and according to certain guidelines that align with the four noble truths and the eightfold path; the commandments. But no man can be sure whether or not he's earned grace. He can't be sure, but the implication is that his actions and level of faith had something to do with it. It can't be earned, but only freely distributed by God.

This is the exact same process as karma, just stripped of its sentimentalism, and the anthropormphization. Ones actions and their level of faith in following the principles of right action will have a significant weight upon their karma, and though they can never be sure how the effects of their karma will play out or when they will do so, the implication is following the tenets of right action is still the best bet for minimizing harm. And the uncertainty mimics the concept of grace being not earned but freely given; good things can still happen to bad people and vice versa in buddhism, and it is recommended not to dwell on the reasons why because it will cause wavering from right action, through delusion. Humility and lack of certainty is a fundamental aspect of both religions.

>>23610628
All except Orthodoxy are, it is the only full expression of divine truth, but here the argument is about what the authoritative texts and their interpreters in the faiths themselves teach, and it sure isn't perennialsm.
>>23610630
>infinity
We would say it's the attribute of having no beginning and end.
>>23610633
>true and untrue
This is gibberish. A thing cannot be true and untrue in the same respect at the same time. If change is the only constant, then you can never arrive at this realisation in the first place. So it's pointless to speak of "my being changes" because under this view there would be no real being.
>>23610636
>WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE TRINITY MEANS
We do, this is why we had many councils explaining it to the heretics.

>>23610651
Belief in Christ. He revealed things about the end times to St. John the Theologian and this knowledge got passed down to us in the Church.

>>23610348
except even most of the scripture was written over the span of several centuries so it isn't even self consistent. That's before we get to the editing.

>>23610659
>teach almost identical things about the path.
You sure, anon?
>Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

>meaning a process that one cannot gain any real insight to
This is not true, we know the process because of divine revelation. It's all in St. John's Ladder of Divine Ascent, other monastic texts, etc. Grace is not some abstract concept but God's power (energies) acting in the saints, it has its own fruits and is noticeable even by novice Christians. Some saints also knew already that they are saved.

>This is the exact same process as karma, just stripped of its sentimentalism, and the anthropormphization.
You're assuming that the 'anthropormphization' is a later accretion and not fundamental to our faith in the Holy Trinity. On what basis do you know your reading is correct? It's just your opinion, because no Buddhist text teaches this.

>>23610673
The Gospel according to St. Matthew was written in ~41AD in our tradition, which is also confirmed by Papias of Hierapolis, the latest text was end of first century.
>bbuuutt Muh modern scholarship
I don't accept it because it doesn't deal with truth, but their own interpretations based on flawed atheistic starting points.
>so it isn't even self consistent.
This implies you have a correct interpretative framework from which to objectively judge it as not self-consistent, but you don't, because it's all picking and choosing with no real coherence behind it just like in every heresy: modernism, Islam, Arianism, JW, etc, etc. All want to say something about the Bible but can't make sense of the entirety of it.

>>23610653
>if anything a God we can fully understand is hardly a God at all
Man if only some was fully man and fully God, maybe he could explain it. He tried, and he was literally perfect by all accounts, but people couldn't understand basically anything apparently other than to believe in Him.
Modern dogma is worthless, other than threatening people to be moral like modern pharisees. Few modern Christians have any of their promised spiritual gifts, and they insist they get them after dying.

>>23610664
Tell me what the Holy Spirit is then. I heard it was a messenger between the Father and the Son. That makes sense to me but it seems to pose serious theological questions to dogmatists.

>>23610664
>All except Orthodoxy are, it is the only full expression of divine truth, but here the argument is about what the authoritative texts and their interpreters in the faiths themselves teach, and it sure isn't perennialsm.
I am an interpreter of the faith and this is what I am "teaching." So you admit you base your faith off of an appeal to external authority?
>We would say it's the attribute of having no beginning and end.
Yes, exactly. Infinity
>gibberish
Certainly, something can be true and untrue. Every paradox is both true and untrue.

>>23610693
No, that's heresy. The Holy Spirit is the third Divine Hypostatis, Who proceeds from the Father. The Holy Spirit has the same Divine essence, energies, attributes as the Father and Son except for His hypostatic property of "proceeding from the Father", which is a mystery.
>Few modern Christians have any of their promised spiritual gifts, and they insist they get them after dying.
This is very true, all of Western Christianity comes to this because it does not believe there can be real knowledge of God in this life because they do not believe His energies can enter into creation, they believe some version of divine simplicity that prevents God from ever truly interacting with creation in an unmediated way, according to them all you experience here is created effects of God's grace, not uncreated grace itself.

>>23610420
I mean, the doctrine of karma assumes a moralistic cause and effect mechanics. What does quantum mechanics say about these personal dispositions and its acts?

>>23610704
>which is a mystery
Is it an unknowable mystery or does the Bible simply never explain it?
Well the Bible never explains it clearly. So by definition it will be an unknowable mystery if you only rely on Biblical text and never other sources.
I wonder if there's anything else that the Bible doesn't clearly explain.

>>23610680
Karma isn't an abstract concept either. It is power (energies) acting through reality, it has its own fruits and is noticeable by literally everyone.
And no, I fully acknowledge that the anthropormphization is fundamental to your faith. But I'm saying that that is precisely what defines it as something not based in logic or observable reality. Any truth claim you make about it is not well supported. You're free to do that, but it makes it easier for anyone who's inclined, to illustrate how it's not logical.

And every text, literally all of them, teach that karma is a fundamental principle of existence and impermanence, causes beget effects; but thats its beyond the mind of any one person to know how karma will shake out, only to live life according to what are the best logical guesses to minimize suffering. So, avoiding the initiation of unnecessary conflict, in most cases, will mean that less harm comes to you. But it doesn't guarantee it; there is some cause or some reason why the harm came to you, but you can't know it. You cannot know the effect of any action before you take it. And it is less delusional and more humble to face this and accept it than it would be to live and believe otherwise.

>>23610701
>So you admit you base your faith off of an appeal to external authority?
Yes, I appeal to the authority of God fundamentally, and He gave His power of interpreting/knowing Scripture to other people called the apostles and their followers. So I trust those whom God has entrusted Himself.
>something can be true and untrue
It's gibberish, you're saying "p and not p" is true. A paradox is something that gives insight into logic and our way of thinking. "This statement is false" shows limits of logic applies to self-referential objects, but it doesn't make the statement both true and false at the same time, it shows that if you assume this statement as true, you arrive at both "true" and "false".

>No, that's heresy
This is all because you rely on Psalms as a basis for truth when it's just songs collected from village bards, put into a poetry section-- not law, not history, not prophets. Your Bible interpretation has been flanderized.
"Do not overburden the angels with prayer" it says. Why? Are not they omnipotent, omnipresent, so on. God scarcely needs angels. God can perch on a box, in a tent.

>>23610707
No, it doesn't. Karma says that there is no way to know what the effect of any action will be. But that the four noble truths and the eightfold path are logically the best way of reducing harm, because on average, actions that don't initiate unnecessary conflict, bring on unnecessary notoriety or fame, or cause unnecessary harm and suffering, don't tend to bring consequences that are negative to one's well being. But, sometimes bad consequences come for people who nearly stick 100% to these principles. And this is because there is no way of knowing how the interdependence of all things and beings, will pan out.

>>23610712
P and not p, is true.

>>23610709
I'm not sure. I don't know if it's unknowable if God chose to reveal it to someone, only God's essence proper is entirely ineffable/apophatic. I don't remember which Church Father said it, but paraphrasing:
"That there is a difference between generation [of the Son] and spiration [of the Holy Spirit] we know, what the difference is we do not know"

>>23610716
>it's just songs collected from village bards, put into a poetry section
source: some musings of atheists based on delusional and self-contradictory assumptions that when taken to their logical conclusion lead to child sacrifice and changing genders.

>>23610710
>based in logic or observable reality
I don't believe in a logic detached from the incarnate Logos. There is no "it just is" logical system that is not tainted by your fallen condition, so how are you arriving at this true form of logic with which to critique Christianity with?
>for anyone who's inclined, to illustrate how it's not logical
>for anyone who's inclined
Precisely, for anyone who shares your view on logic it is not logical, but who says everything has to fall into this view? God is supra-logical, but not illogical, and the grounding for logic itself.
>It is power (energies) acting through reality, it has its own fruits and is noticeable by literally everyone.
Is it impersonal or personal? That's what I meant by abstract concept in that case. For us there is no impersonal/non-hypostatic actions at all, so that is a key difference between our views and so it is definitely not the same process.

I like how the space pokemon players invaded this thread with their vaporeon fuck shit.

>>23610732
Job isn't literal, Song of Songs isn't literal, Psalms aren't literal. There's your theological problem. You can't even answer the rest of the post.
You don't know the nature of God, someone else does. Jesus sure. Disciples, prophets, maybe. Your kind is neither, is clueless.

>>23609939
>Buddha was revered as a Christian saint (Barlaam and Josaphat
What's the story behind this? How is it meant to be similar to the Buddha's story?

>>23610717
>it is not moralistic because it is basically pure cause and effect mechanics proved by the most recent physical theories, and we cannot know the effect of any action!
>but of course you should follow buddhistic rules because coincidentally its metaphysics and praxis resonate with the mechanics of physical cause and effect law
Seriously, this is pathetic. You literally say you cannot know the effects of actions in order to aver that there is a logical knowledge of its operations in buddhism. You deny that there is something more implicated in this cause and effect law you describe karma as, but at the same time proceed to affirm how a specific, ETHICAL/MORAL quality in a particular action will lead to a mechanistic effect with a moral rebound effect. In the end, it is the same old story: even if you behave badly in discordance with buddhism and yet suffer no bad outcome in this life, you will rebirth with your due punishment. But this is much, much worse than the Abrahamic conception because they acknowledge the personal quality of the deity and the moral structure of the world.

>>23610752
If there is no "it just is" logical system that is not tainted by our fallen condition, then how are you able to logically support the idea that we are in a fallen condition?
>Precisely, for anyone who shares your view on logic it is not logical, but who says everything has to fall into this view?
Nobody, it's just that your logic is based on an explicit appeal to an anthropomorphized authority, shown here:
>God is supra-logical, but not illogical, and the grounding for logic itself.
Whom you treat as a brute fact. Which is fine, you can do that, but for most people familiar with logic, this will be shown as a blatant appeal to external authority that does not follow and does not have enough supportive weight behind it.
Karma is impersonal, but it carries the weight of personal actions. What I had said before was that yes, it is the same process minus the unsupportable, brute fact belief in anthropormphization, which is what makes it a dogmatic form of belief.

>>23610707
>What does quantum mechanics say about these personal dispositions and its acts?

praise science that quantum mechanics reveal to us more wisdom, oh what wonders the prophe- i mean scientists have next

>>23610759
>literal vs figurative
We don't believe in this dialectic. We have at least four senses of interpretation of a given text, with many applying at the same time. And you cannot know which one to apply when without divine revelation and holy tradition that is guided by the Holy Spirit in the Church.
https://orthochristian.com/93126.html
https://orthochristian.com/82164.html

>You don't know the nature of God
Nobody does but God. We know His actions and revelations.

>you can't even answer
That statement is based on false assumptions like 1) you know what that verse means 2) God needs to conform to your understanding of angels 3) that if God can do something Himself, He cannot chose to command some creations to do certain things.

>>23610780
by what authority does logic itself appeal to, other than "it just is" which is in of itself how God justifies himself "i just am" -- it is same appeal then, an authority to God, because God is the author of logic

>>23610777
No, I didn't say this
>but at the same time proceed to affirm how a specific, ETHICAL/MORAL quality in a particular action will lead to a mechanistic effect with a moral rebound effect.
I said that logically, it is the best chance one has of reducing suffering and avoiding harmful consequences by not engaging in these kinds of actions ones self; but it doesn't guarantee anything specifically because there is no straight line between good actions and bad actions. There's not even any good or bad in the truest sense.
>rebirth with your due punishment
There is no such thing as punishment within karma. There is the logical consequences of actions within an interdependent, cyclical universe, based in conditional existence.
I would argue that the abrahamic conception has produced much harm in the world based on the overly symbolic use of language that causes dogmatic thinking.

>>23610752
>Is it impersonal or personal?
That's (one of) the weak point(s) in buddhism. They assume a strictly moral/ethical (and with that, personal) cause and effect mechanics implicated in the doctrine of karma only to posit it onto an impersonal, void samsaric world of endless dependent origination and continuation.

>>23610780
>then how are you able to logically support the idea that we are in a fallen condition?
By divine revelation, you can see the effects of the fall and even conclude that something is not right with this world, as Gautama rightfully did, but knowing the full picture is impossible without revelation and your organs of knowledge being healed by union with Christ. It's why the Logos became flesh.
>Whom you treat as a brute fact.
I treat God as grounding for logic, because logic is inseparable from the personal Logos. It's as much of an appeal to authority as you saying there just is a logic by which you judge Christianity to be illogical. You will never escape an appeal like this, but for you it will be subjective and arbitrary because ultimately you will be your own grounding for logic.
>>23610793
This.

>>23610793
Well yes, the infinite "just is," but your infinite is anthropormphized, mine is far beyond categorical limits. So true, my notion of infinity is what justifies logic itself, but yours is preconditioned by a logic prior to ever even coming into the picture. This causes an error.

>>23610808
>but knowing the full picture is impossible without revelation and your organs of knowledge being healed by union with Christ. It's why the Logos became flesh
Yes, I understand that this is your belief rooted in faith and not in logic. And Guatama never said anything was wrong with this world. He just said the this world contains suffering.
>I treat God as grounding for logic, because logic is inseparable from the personal Logos.
This is circular. I treat God as ground for logic, because God is the ground for logic.
Which is actually closer to what I believe about the infinite.

>>23610810
>infinite is anthropormphized
What does this mean? We don't teach that God is at all like humans in His essence.
>preconditioned by a logic
In what way? God is beyond logic in His essence, human logic is created, just like the categories.

>>23610823
You teach that God is a figure, has moralistic attitudes, preferences, judges, discerns, makes pronouncements, gives prescriptions. You teach that God has a whole host of personality traits.
If God is beyond logic in his essence, then you wouldn't be able to say anything about him at all. Yet, you do.

>>23610819
>This is circular.
Correct, ultimately it is because God just is. The difference is that your grounding is in yourself, but my grounding is in God. You believe you have access to some untainted logic with which to judge God and that He is somehow conditioned by it.
>He just said the this world contains suffering.
For us this is not the ideal state of being, thus it being "wrong" insofar as God allowed it to occur providentially.

>>23610832
>If God is beyond logic in his essence, then you wouldn't be able to say anything about him at all.
We don't believe God is identical to His essence. God can really act, but this action is not identical to the ineffable essence. And this action is communicable to humans. The preferences of God are a reflection of His attributes, but He Himself is not like man, rather man is made in God's image, man is an icon of the Logos (Christ is called God's icon).

>>23610792
Your Bible is worthless if you have no idea how to interpret it. That's all your attesting to. That's all. Your whole dogma is borne of ignorance.
Instead classify the books at face value (law, history, prophets, gospel, letters, others) and work from there and everything will fall into place. Treating a whole library as a single genre is folly and folly is what you have.
Base your worldview on clear commands from the Son and Father (when they are presented as such) and then you'll start to see into their character. You have a religion that has been rebuilt by man.
God delegates tasks out to non-human entities of limited power and you reject this. You would rather obfuscate theology than clarify it, with infallibility as your fallback. Everything you offer is misinterpretation.
I will not weep as Christianity declines but I fear what will replace it.

>>23610799
>said that logically, it is the best chance one has of reducing suffering and avoiding harmful consequences by not engaging in these kinds of actions ones self;
This is an ethical formula. There is nothing in the nature of things in which the effect of a behavior can be inferred on the behavior before the behavior being actualized and it is illogical to infer an inductive reasoning as such by appealing to induction itself. How does killing an insect accrue the specific rebound effect of causing harm, suffering?
>There's not even any good or bad in the truest sense.
Then how there can be a prescriptive praxis in Buddhism? This now goes beyond the issue here to another logical problem even.
>There is no such thing as punishment within karma
That was a more figurative speech, but in a sense, yes, rebirth in samsara is, let's say, ''not attaining the goal''. You'll suffer and cause suffering, so...
>There is the logical consequences of actions
Which are not so logical because we cannot know the outcomes of actions, or some actions, or whatever you Buddhists stop being evasive about.
>I would argue that the abrahamic conception has produced much harm in the world based on the overly symbolic use of language that causes dogmatic thinking.
Sure Buddhism is an exception, I'm a present witness.

>>23610845
>Bible is worthless if you have no idea how to interpret it.
Which is why we do not base our faith on the Bible, but in God, who revealed the Bible itself and the way to interpret it. For us revelation is not just the Bible.
>at face value
>implying there is a face value unconditioned by your opinions

>God delegates tasks out to non-human entities of limited power and you reject this.
I don't reject this. God is absolutely free, and has made angels to do certain tasks in this created order. Everything has its place in creation and does its duty.

>I will not weep as Christianity declines but I fear what will replace it.
Christ Himself said we are a small flock, we know the numbers will decline and we even know what will happen because we have revelation. It's nothing new. The worship of antichrist will replace it in the future in the minds of this world, where a man who comes in his own name will claim he is Christ and God and people will believe him.

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>>23610858
Look at it. This is the way it is classified. Nuance is inconvenient those who want to use scripture to amass power, and so nuance is discarded. Instead you have nonsense and fear.

>>23610866
>Nuance is inconvenient
And yet we have such a rich and nuanced tradition of interpreting the entirety of Holy Scripture in a self-consistent way. This classification is born out of our tradition by the way, and our way of interpreting is directly based on Christ's words about the Torah and prophets speaking about Him. After the resurrection Christ taught the apostles on how to read and understand Scripture.
>Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
Luke 24, 44-45

>>23610833
No. Your grounding is also yourself. For me, I believe everything happens for some reason and originates out of infinity. So logically I infer everything happens for some reason with some cause, but I can't know anything about it beyond understanding the concept of infinity. You believe you can know things about your God, or at least, that other men can. They say they've had revelations, and you believe their authority on this, then make all kinds of claims about God. I don't believe their claims on blind faith in their revelations, so I don't believe in the very particular type of God you describe. The fact that your God is particular, personal, etc is what means that he is conditioned by logic; infinity, being the void, requires no logical justification, because it is the null. Something can only come from nothing if everything is potentially possible. I make less inferences than you do, in my chain of logic, because of the conditioned limits of your God's description. The infinite makes no demands of me, has no personality, gives no pronouncements, etc.

>>23610894
How can there be anything if there is an infinite chain of cause and effect?

>>23610849
>How does killing an insect accrue the specific rebound effect of causing harm, suffering?
It causes harm to the insect, but as for a rebound, there is no way to know if it will cause a specific rebound effect in one's life and karma doesn't claim that it will. But it could, and you wouldn't know it until it occurred.
>Then how there can be a prescriptive praxis in Buddhism? This now goes beyond the issue here to another logical problem even.
There isn't. There are suggestions and guidances, given alongside the ultimate dictum, "walk your own path."
>That was a more figurative speech, but in a sense, yes, rebirth in samsara is, let's say, ''not attaining the goal''. You'll suffer and cause suffering, so...
Nirvana is a state of mind that can be connected with and embodied within samsara. When you are fully connected with nirvana, it feels as if one has functionally been lifted out of samsara. But the only true escape from samsara is non existence. It is within the nature of being to cling to existence. Therefore one will always incarnate into samsara, but for as long as one can maintain a connection with nirvana, the less they will suffer. Nirvana is an unreachable goal that gets more real the closer you get to never reaching it. This means it's a state of being, not a goal or endpoint.
>not so logical
Not being able to know the outcome of actions doesn't negate the logical principle of "every action has a cause within space time," which is just a necessary principle for an interdependent, conditioned existence.
>Buddhism is an exception
Yes. I've used no symbols nor relied upon dogma.

>>23610906
Because we live within a dream.

>>23610224
>You believe in a vicious campaign of murder and enmity
You're thinking of Islam. Christianity is incompatible with forced conversion.

>>23610887
You're a hundred generations past that opening of the mind.
> interpreting the entirety of Holy Scripture in a self-consistent way. This classification is born out of our tradition
Yes I know. Simply put it operates on axioms
>God is true, anything he says is true
>God personally dictated or at least approved the whole Bible
>so despite contradictions it's all singularly completely true despite spanning centuries of authorship
>despite the new covenant, despite classifications of books, despite context even to reconcile endless contradictions
>such as a human appearance of God (when Jacob fought God in human form and God said as much), this was either a theophany (unexplainable) or Jesus himself despite Jesus needing to have been born in the first place
>"have no other gods before me" becomes "there are no other gods" despite God never actually stating such, and the existence of dragons, satan, and angels sometimes conflated with canaanite deities
>Revelation is a recollection of a vision which is interpreted as only a dream although Jesus can clearly manifest in the flesh, John's words there are contrasted with God who claims his own words are reliable and true
>there's other nitpicky contradictions that mostly are related to poetic language
Anyways it's impossible for you to correctly claim that your mind is open to understanding of the scriptures when you claim ignorance so quickly. This has led into the tradition of interpretation. The trinity, even a fiery hell (as opposed to a watery one) lack scriptural support.
Instead of a 4 way interpretation there should be a heirarchical one that judges operates on the credit of the author or speaker overwriting contradictions. Then you could start getting a clearer picture. This would be a laborious task but the results would make sense.

>>23610929
Ask the Jews about the Spanish Inquisition

>>23610934
Catholics attempting to purge Jewish/Islamic teaching. It's to Christianity what Buddhists going conquering and raising a Buddha statue over every town they captured would be to Buddhism.

>>23610941
Yeah except Buddhists don't do that.

>>23610944
And if some people calling themselves Buddhists did, would that be a refutation of Buddhism?

>>23610944
>Yeah except Buddhists don't do that.
Yeah, we've *never* done that.

Fucking moron.

>>23610947
Taungoo?

>>23609979
It teaches dukkha and the end of dukkha.

Basically all of us are caught up in an endless transmigration/continual rebirth through various realms, from human to animal to ghost to torture realms and heaven realms. All realms are ultimately unsatisfactory/dukkha. There is no substantial self soul or ego that is reborn/annata. Everything is impermanent/annica. These are the three marks of existence. What drives rebirth is craving. Craving for further life, craving for things to be otherwise, craving for death even. Craving grasping and clinging to world binds you to it and makes you get reborn. Also kamma determines the realm of your rebirth. Kamma is like a moral force that punishes or rewards you in the afterlife for good of bad deeds. Buddha says every life and every real is ultimately dukkha, and he had insight into how to prevent future rebirth. He called it 8fold path. Basically it involves understanding the 3 marks of existence, stop craving things, and turn away from sensory delight. The final goal in life is nibbana. That's when you become an arahant and won't be reborn. When arahant dies he goes parinibbana. This is how atheist materialist conceives of death - permanent lights out.

Buddha also taught many other stuff like how lay people should live, how to get better rebirth, how the sangha and community should live in harmony, how monks should act, etc. But primary he taught suffering and its cessation. A method to stop rebirth.

Also then the Chinese Tibetans nips and thais corrupted the teachings and added weird shit. Ignore that. Focus on early buddhist texts only.

>>23610946
No. But the fact that it doesn't happen very often, and that Christianity has been the basis for many intra-European atrocities, as well as one of the driving forces behind the religio-colonization of most of the non Christian world, probably says something about the incentive structures built into the logical differences between the belief systems.
>>23610947
The only example I'm aware of was the Japanese nationalists who believed a Japanese-Buddhist empire should take over all of Asia by force, but this was a very obvious misreading of Buddhism and a total aberration more influenced by Japanese nationalism. Where as nearly every Christian nation has done this with global implications.

>>23610120
Sure:

https://wiswo.org/books/niknib/

Read this.

>>23609794
>>23609802
*tips fedora
back to reading Hitchens and Steiner slop

>>23610952
Or it says that the Christian faith isn't designed for application by temporal powers, and that it doesn't incentivize much of anything for state figures, leaving them with only those things they would've done in its absence.
The fact that Christianity was prominent in a region subject to unique influences and opportunities that enabled the formation of globe-spanning empire is not a refutation of Christianity.
You can't apply circumstantial evidence to a refutation of an idea.

>>23610952
>Where as nearly every Christian nation has done this with global implications.
That's a lie. Most were swallowed up by these empires, or born as offshoots.

>>23610915
>It causes harm to the insect, but as for a rebound, there is no way to know if it will cause a specific rebound effect in one's life and karma doesn't claim that it will. But it could
Of course it causes harm, every movement and by consequence force of bodies are potential harms to the very bodies conjoined in the corporeal system. But I'm curious now, there is no way to know, then whence the claims concerning actions that the doctrine of karma prescribes in all its implications? It is based on ''it could be such and such''? Where is all the logic now?
>and you wouldn't know it until it occurred.
And how could one infer that a specific event X was the effect of another specific event Y?
>There isn't. There are suggestions and guidances, given alongside the ultimate dictum, "walk your own path."
There isn't but there is. There are mere suggestions but there are also ''the four noble truths and the eightfold path that are logical'' (viz. your post here >>23610717). Is there any where in any Buddhist text an explicit affirmation that the Four Noble Truths and the 8fold Path are mere suggestions? That it could be totally illusory? And what is the logic behind it to even suggest it as a possible and better suggestion in detriment of others? What is the logic justifying that a secular or a Christian ethical moral suggestion be of less merit in comparison?
>for as long as one can maintain a connection with nirvana, the less they will suffer
Which is not samsara, etc. I'm right in the end, but this is beside the main issue here.
>the logical principle of "every action has a cause within space time," which is just a necessary principle for an interdependent, conditioned existence
Which is way different from the specific prescriptive moral, ethical rules that the doctrine of karma imply. Not a single practical doctrine ignore the neutral and obvious point that a cause precede an effect, lol.
>I've used no symbols nor relied upon dogma
You keep repeating yourself about how buddhist doctrine of karma is logical only to concede that the doctrine implicate merely suggestions, and then go back to saying that the rules for action are actually logical and obvious due to cause and effect existing in the world, which is a logical fallacy. Then yeah, nirvana is no symbol, lol.

>>23610917
>super logical ontology grounded on the principle of sufficient reason
>because it's all dream!
Seriously, thank you for showing buddhists are WAY more retarded than I thought

>>23610214
4.3.1.3. The Long Section on Ethics
56.1There are some ascetics and brahmins who, while enjoying food given in faith, still earn a living by low lore, by wrong livelihood. 56.2This includes such fields as limb-reading, omenology, divining celestial portents, interpreting dreams, divining bodily marks, divining holes in cloth gnawed by mice, fire offerings, ladle offerings, offerings of husks, rice powder, rice, ghee, or oil; offerings from the mouth, blood sacrifices, palmistry; geomancy for building sites, fields, and cemeteries; exorcisms, earth magic, snake charming, poisons; the lore of the scorpion, the rat, the bird, and the crow; prophesying life span, chanting for protection, and divining omens from wild animals. 56.3They refrain from such low lore, such wrong livelihood. 56.4This pertains to their ethics.

57.1There are some ascetics and brahmins who, while enjoying food given in faith, still earn a living by low lore, by wrong livelihood. 57.2This includes reading the marks of gems, cloth, clubs, swords, spears, arrows, weapons, women, men, boys, girls, male and female bondservants, elephants, horses, buffaloes, bulls, cows, goats, rams, chickens, quails, monitor lizards, rabbits, tortoises, or deer. 57.3They refrain from such low lore, such wrong livelihood. 57.4This pertains to their ethics.

>>23610959
You can say they used religion as a scapegoat but you don't see any ruling church authority having many complaints about it unless it involved their personal political priorities. What else would the crusades have been if not religiously motivated? A defensive war? And anyway, even if it hadn't been motivated by religious zeal, what good is it and its teachings when it fails even to wag a finger at something like empire building? Is dominating other cultures for the sake of personal gain really a very christian thing to do? What happened to thou shalt not covet thy neighbors house?
If the effective application of christianity to a power structure is to do nothing while people kill eachother exactly as much as if it didn't exist for the exact same sins, what's the point? Why the churches? Why the tithes? Is the only benefit they can present some unverifiable golden ticket to the bouncy house in the afterlife?
Kill rape and murder but if you pay us you get an extra hour in god's ball pit?
I guess if that's your measure for the value of religion you're right, christianity can't be blamed for anything except perhaps sloth, but damn what a wastrel belief if that is so.

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>>23610979
thanks

>>23609832
>The fuck is the point of Buddhism if there's no rebirth?
Idk sometimes it's just oneupsmanship against the universe like oh I'm suffering well jokes on you I don't care. Everything is subjective/objective. People want nice things and also a good attitude like most people are aware at some point that you can be rich and miserable or poor and happy. So people are looking for a mindset that either makes them happy or makes them better at life. But buddhism is weird because it is anti ego and material. So, it could be good for being a cutthroat ceo or something, or maybe not.

I don't really think there is room for buddhism in this economy like people have to work and still don't have enough. So there's no time to be buddhist recreationally or professionally.

>>23610932
>You're a hundred generations past that opening of the mind.
I am in the Body of Christ, the Church, which the pillar and grounding of truth. Truth will be preserved till the end of time, so this is not an issue for us.
>>such as a human appearance of God (when Jacob fought God in human form and God said as much), this was either a theophany (unexplainable) or Jesus himself despite Jesus needing to have been born in the first place
This is the level of 4chan Buddhist/perennialists' understanding of Christianity? It's simply epic. I really don't want to sound insulting, but you should really read some Orthodox church fathers on what they say about Christology, essence/energies distinction and the theophanies, that way any future discussions with a Christian will be more than him simply telling you that you don't understand the worldview you are critiquing. It would be about the same as if I tried to find contradictions in the intricacies of Buddhists debates when I don't know what each school teaches. Your understanding has a lot of false assumptions and misunderstandings.
>contradictions
A contradiction presupposes a logical system with which to judge it as a contradiction, a contradiction presupposes you know what that truth is and that the given proposition is false in the system because of the other axioms or propositions known to be true, you have no basis for knowing you have such an infallible system. Buddhism does not teach what you teach about Christianity, you have no infallible authority to refer to but yourself like all modernist atheists do. Also a contradiction (p -> false) is proven assuming p (in a context) and showing it to imply some falsehood, but you aren't even stating p correctly and not seeing how what you think is contradictory in the system is actually true in the system. Your best path to disproving Christianity is either "under the assumptions of Christianity, show there is a self-contradiction or "show Buddhism is true, then assuming Christianity a contradiction arrises".
Your methodology is basically:
>I think this is what it means, enlightened by my own intelligence, and I don't care what the tradition teaches, it's all le corrupt and I think it's false from the outset

>>23611002
>You can say they used religion as a scapegoat but you don't see any ruling church authority having many complaints about it unless it involved their personal political priorities.
Because there IS no church authority. You're going to get personal BS politics because that's all there is for it to be.
>What else would the crusades have been if not religiously motivated?
A way to move warlords off the continent and exhaust manpower in a meaningless fight.
>And anyway, even if it hadn't been motivated by religious zeal, what good is it and its teachings when it fails even to wag a finger at something like empire building?
Outside the scope of its teachings. It's not a religion for kings. It's a religion for common men.
>What happened to thou shalt not covet thy neighbors house?
Do you see the text advocating for imperial conquest?
>If the effective application of christianity to a power structure is to do nothing while people kill eachother exactly as much as if it didn't exist for the exact same sins, what's the point?
To govern the elect in particular.
It's not some tool for controlling society or the state. It doesn't attempt to do that. It tells concerned individuals, chosen ahead of time by God, how to live their lives in a Godly way during their time in a forsaken creation.
>Why the churches? Why the tithes?
Community outreach and fair distribution of burdens in uplifting the poor and educating them.
>Is the only benefit they can present some unverifiable golden ticket to the bouncy house in the afterlife?
Church structures actually have provided countless benefits for the public good, and formed the basis of many administrative organs, but this tends to go unappreciated.
>Kill rape and murder but if you pay us you get an extra hour in god's ball pit?
You're thinking of Catholicism.
>I guess if that's your measure for the value of religion
Not your tool for restraining the state. Go introduce real political theory to the warlords if you care.

>>23611034
yeah I've been meaning to look into Eastern Orthodox

Pokkharasādi scrutinized the Buddha’s body for the thirty-two marks of a great man. He saw all of them except for two, which he had doubts about: whether the private parts are covered in a foreskin, and the largeness of the tongue.

Then it occurred to the Buddha, “Pokkharasādi sees all the marks except for two, which he has doubts about: whether the private parts are covered in a foreskin, and the largeness of the tongue.” Then the Buddha used his psychic power to will that Pokkharasādi would see his private parts covered in a foreskin. And he stuck out his tongue and stroked back and forth on his ear holes and nostrils, and covered his entire forehead with his tongue.

Pokkharasādi thought, “The ascetic Gotama possesses the thirty-two marks completely, lacking none.”

>>23611049
Do it anon.

>>23610952
Contemporary Thai fascism. Historical Thai fascism. Thai, Tibetan, Viet, Chinese, Korean, Japanese empire building. Chinese, Japanese and Thai monstrous temples. Buddhism in India was also fucking nasty.

>>23609785
>there's even suttas where he uses his divine Astral projection to show doubters his sheathed penis
Which ones?

>>23610966
>And how could one infer that a specific event X was the effect of another specific event Y?
You can't

>>23610966
>Is there any where in any Buddhist text an explicit affirmation that the Four Noble Truths and the 8fold Path are mere suggestions?
Yes. Every buddhist text says one must walk their own path

>>23611054
Is this... real?

>>23611073
Thank you for conceding to my point.

>>23611076
Can you cite some passages? I think this is really laudable if so. But can you not really find any passage with a set of rules to follow to accrue good outcomes?

>>23610966
>Which is way different from the specific prescriptive moral, ethical rules that the doctrine of karma imply
Karma doesn't imply prescriptive rules. You keep saying that, but its just not true.
>You keep repeating yourself about how buddhist doctrine of karma is logical only to concede that the doctrine implicate merely suggestions, and then go back to saying that the rules for action are actually logical and obvious due to cause and effect existing in the world, which is a logical fallacy. Then yeah, nirvana is no symbol, lol.
Yes, karma is just cause and effect. That is logical, you agreed with that here too. Yes, the idea of karma implicates that it would be wise to behave ethically, and buddhist teaching (not karma) provides suggestions on what ethical behavior looks like in general. The guidances are logical in that while you can never know the consequences of an action, your best bet is to behave ethically in most contexts as it is less likely to lead to suffering.
What is the fallacy?

And nirvana is not a symbol, it's a state of being

>>23611079
That's not a concession. I stated that from the outset, you can't know the causes and effects chains of any actions.

>>23611079
No. Read the books
And it's not laudable. It's just logical and a truism. You will walk your own path no matter what and while I can make suggestions its ridiculous of me to think I can make you do or believe something.

>>23611086
''Yeah cause and effect is so illogical. Lmao'' (>>23610365)
''No, its literally cause and effect. In its totality'' (>>23610392)
''Quantum mechanics directly says this through the principles of entanglement and the uncertainty principle. All is connected, and you can never be sure how and where'' (>>23610420)
Only then, when pressed more, you started to concede that there is no knowledge about the effect of some causes, but still somehow finding it logical, appealed to ''the noble truths and eightfold path as logically the best way'' of behaving in the world.
And then when we agree that the chain of cause and effect of actions cannot be known and I just follow logically that it makes no sense to give more merit to one over another ethical set of rules, you deny that there is a moralistic ethical undertone in the doctrine of karma and buddhism, and revolve back to the dogmatic assertion that it is the way it is and buddhism is right.

>>23611090
I read a bit here https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/kamma
and https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-kammanto/index.html
doesn't seem to agree much with this ''walk your own path''

>>23611113
This is the fourth or fifth time that I'm saying that karma is just that causes and effects happen, but doesn't make any claims about the nature of specific causes and effects. It says that as a general guidance, behaving well is better for avoiding suffering than behaving badly, and Buddha gave a guidance about how to behave well, while acknowledging that one must walk their own path. None of that is contradictory; if you walk up to someone and call them a pussy faggot, you don't know that this will create a problem for you, but the odds are much higher than if you said "hello." This is based on human interpersonal experience. If you walk up to a fire and put your hand in it, you don't know that you'll get burned, but it's much more likely than if you didn't stick your hand in fires. This is based on human direct experience.

>>23611119
You necessarily walk your own path. Buddhists all admit this. How could it be any other way?

Giving these guidances and then saying "walk your own path" is another way of saying, "if you think these guidances are not correct, then fuck around and find out."

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>>23609979
Thank you guys for all the replies.
I have another question, what is the main disagreement between Advaitins and Buddhists?

>>23611183
Who is this you? Who is this me? Who is walking?

>>23611178
>This is based on human interpersonal experience
Exactly, and this accrues an effect on cosmic and ontological scale, which is absurd if there is not a personal moral (redundant) set order corresponding to these cosmic and ontological structures. It makes no sense to posit *personal* subjective values on an impersonal cosmic and ontological structure and mechanism.
>If you walk up to a fire and put your hand in it, you don't know that you'll get burned, but it's much more likely than if you didn't stick your hand in fires
Yes, but this has no cosmic and ontological effect, there is no right or wrong beyond an immediate subjective sensation of pain.

Also, there is this https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.136.nymo.html

>>23611183
Well, in the end every member of a religion ultimately needs to go with this. You can't force people into your religion in an intimate way.

"Now, when asked, 'Is stress self-made?' you say, 'Don't say that, Kassapa.' When asked, 'Then is it other-made?' you say, 'Don't say that, Kassapa.' When asked, 'Then is it both self-made and other-made?' you say, 'Don't say that, Kassapa.' When asked, 'Then is it the case that stress, being neither self-made nor other-made, arises spontaneously?' you say, 'Don't say that, Kassapa.' When asked, 'Then does stress not exist?' you say, 'It's not the case, Kassapa, that stress does not exist. Stress does exist.' When asked, 'Well, in that case, does Master Gotama not know or see stress?' you say, 'Kassapa, it's not the case that I don't know or see stress. I know stress. I see stress.' Then explain stress to me, lord Blessed One. Teach me about stress, lord Blessed One!"

"'The one who acts is the one who experiences [the result of the act]' amounts to the eternalist statement, 'Existing from the very beginning, stress is self-made.' 'The one who acts is someone other than the one who experiences'[2] amounts to the annihilationist statement, 'For one existing harassed by feeling, stress is other-made.' Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle:

From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications.
From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness.
From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form.
From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media.
From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact.
From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling.
From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving.
From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance.
From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming.
From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth.
From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.

"Now from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications. From the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness. From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form. From the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of the six sense media. From the cessation of the six sense media comes the cessation of contact. From the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling. From the cessation of feeling comes the cessation of craving. From the cessation of craving comes the cessation of clinging/ sustenance. From the cessation of clinging/sustenance comes the cessation of becoming. From the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of birth. From the cessation of birth, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of stress & suffering."

>>23611240
Yes. Buddhism doesn't propose right and wrong either, but compassion for suffering, and suffering itself.

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>>23611240>>23610966

Right and wrong are just words. What exists is the skillful activities of the mind and the unskillful activities of the mind.
The skillful activities get you less suffering by getting you up on the planes of existence ; on the opposite side, cultivating the unskillful activities get you down on the planes.

>>23611270
He will not understand

>>23611269
>Buddhism doesn't propose right and wrong either, but compassion for suffering, and suffering itself.
In the Suttas there are recurrent talk about right and wrong view, which in the end can even determine one's fate.
For instance:
>In the case of the person who takes life...[yet] on the break-up of the body, after death, reappears in the good destinations, in the heavenly world: either earlier he performed fine kamma that is to be felt as pleasant, or later he performed fine kamma that is to be felt as pleasant, or at the time of death he adopted & carried out right views. Because of that, on the break-up of the body, after death, he reappears in the good destinations, in the heavenly world. But as for the results of taking life... holding wrong views, he will feel them either right here & now, or later [in this lifetime], or following that...

>>23611270
>Right and wrong are just words.
Not according to Buddhism. See above.

>>23611303
Within the context of avoiding suffering, "right" would mean views that avoid suffering, "wrong" would mean that generate suffering, but not right or wrong in any objective sense.

>>23611314
It explicitly predicates the final cause of good outcome in a heavenly world on the right view. How is this not objective? How is now avoiding suffering a mere ''context'' when the whole buddhist ontology grounds itself on suffering and its cessation, it revolves around the absoluteness of suffering and not-suffering.

>— AN 8.40 The drinking of fermented & distilled liquors — when indulged in, developed, & pursued — is something that leads to hell, to rebirth as a common animal, to the realm of the hungry shades. The slightest of all the results coming from drinking fermented & distilled liquors is that, when one becomes a human being, it leads to mental derangement."
More doctrinal proof of what I have been ascertaining in this thread for hours.

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>>23611078
Yes it's from It’s from DN. 3 “With Ambaṭṭha”:

Here's a good thread discussing it: https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/the-politics-of-the-buddha-s-genitals/4876

The OP of that thread is Bhante Sujato, basically like an OG western buddhist, studied under Thai forest tradition and a prolific translator of the suttas. If you've read a sutta on suttacentral chances are it's his translation.

And to the other guy asking for proof that nibbana = what atheist materialist thinks of death check out Bhante Sujatos series of blog posts here:

>https://sujato.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/vinna%E1%B9%87a-is-not-nibbana-really-it-just-isn%E2%80%99t/#:~:text=The%20etymology%20of%20vi%C3%B1%C3%B1%C4%81%E1%B9%87a%20is,a%20root%20with%20a%20prefix.
>https://sujato.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/nibbana-is-still-not-vinna%e1%b9%87a/
>https://sujato.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/nibbana-remains-not-vinnana/

Plus the very comprehensive essay I linked above:
>https://wiswo.org/books/niknib/

And here's another comprehensive post from Bhante Sujato discussing why those who try and remove the 'mystical' elements from buddhism have wrong view:
>https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/why-secular-buddhism-is-not-true/6399

>>23611333
yeah but in the end it's just the Long Discourses


>>23611078
greek status have small penises for a reason too

>>23611266
It's passages like these that show Buddha was very clear with his language. It's kind of like how (pari)nibbana = no consciousness. But if Buddha would affirm that, his followers would think "the Buddha says we are annihilated at death!', and if he were to deny that his followers would say "the Buddha says our Atman is eternal!" That is why the simile of the flame is so good. The flame has no self-same essence, it's a process dependent upon conditions (heat fuel oxygen). When those conditions cease there is no more burning. That's what nibbana is. The conditions for further rebirth have been removed and the process stops. No self or soul was annihilated, there was no atman in the first place. Just a condition sustained by ignorance and craving that made a process of rebirth continue. Buddha showed how to stop the process.

But of course in reality buddhist ontology is wacked out fucking nonsense lol and there is no proof either way for rebirth. And I'm not believing the ontology of some Indian 2.5k years ago who claimed to be able to walk through walls and multiply himself. That would be retarded.

>>23611329
Just read what Guatama said and think about it, and disregard everything anyone else says.
Also, stop trying to be the cool guy that will debunk the religion of buddhism and focus on the philosophy of reality. Then look at what buddhism says about it again.
I arrived at buddhism after spending my adult life reading western philosophy. Those questions lead me here, and from that context it makes more sense. I don't even read most of what the monks have to say. The basic distilled cosmology is enough to recognize the truth in it.

>>23611378
I am more or less sympathetic to Buddhism, but I see a lot of problems in the consequences and extensions of the doctrine of karma that are not restricted to particular schools.

>>23609979
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
>When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of that. When this isn't, that isn't. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.
This is the basis of all of buddhism

>>23611333
>sujato
What are his thoughts on “LGBT”?

>>23611190
The existence of a transpersonal truly existent Brahman

>>23611333
There's some mystical elements but what drew me to it is the agnostic approach to God/Creator. Not because I don't believe in that, I'm sympathetic to the idea of at least a higher consciousness that's interested in forming realities. But I like that buddhism backs up the things it advocates for through a comprehensive analysis of reality that doesn't fall back on God, along with guidances that make sense on their own instead of "because God will send you to Hell." It sounds weird but having the onus put squarely back on my shoulders made me a better, calmer person.

>>23609794
>Judaism
>Not actively harmful to everyone
Shalom rabbi!

>>23609794
How is Buddhism not turbo-cringe?

>>23610052
Name a sutta were magic is a fundamental part of the discourse then

>>23609864
What if the actual ontology of the world is such that it is shaped by human belief? Huh, what then smart guy?

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Hi

>>23611190
Advaita has a substantialist ontology and buddhism a process oriented ontology, but some people say Advaita is actually crypto-buddhism snd thst brahman is just a hindu way to articulate the buddhist dharmakaya

>>23611791
Hinduism predates buddhism though

Hinduism
-brahmins says only brahmins have access to the ultimate truth, other people in other castes can't access wisdom
-brahmins says rituals and mantra and killing horses can only be performed by brahmins and it's the only way to communicate with the gods


Buddhism
-Buddha says everybody can get enlightened, irrespective of the caste system by the brahmins
-the rituals and killings made up by the brahmins are useless and just a social construct
-instead the way to get enlightened is through superior knowledge about reality and cultivating the mind with meditation

No wonder brahmins hate the buddha after being exposed.

>>23611909
>Buddha says everybody can get enlightened
Uh, pretty sure only men are capable of enlightenment.

>>23611909
Hinduism
-Many enlightened sages in just the past century

Buddhism
-Not a single enlightened buddhist just fat western larpers

>>23611909
It's funny how Guatama posed a similar threat to the native social order of his country the same way Jesus did for his, using nearly the exact same strategy: democratization of the method.

>>23611926
Both promise but don't deliver. Both are tools of Globohomo. Both are life denying.

>>23609794
I love hiw you slipped Judaism into not being harmful and thought we wouldn't notice. Judaism is the exception of being both harmful and turbo-cringe.

Oh and let me guess: Nietzsche is heckin based.

>>23611929
I disagree, but it doesn't matter.

>>23611956
Low energy.

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>>23609785
you should detach yourself from Buddhism and your desire to be a Buddhist.

>>23611929
>a non-juadic religion from 2500 is created by globohom

kek the jews are losing the narrative

>>23611990
You are the Jew.

>>23609785
Something that explained a ton about Buddhism for me was the DMT forums
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=topics&f=78

It's clear that beyond a certain point with psychedelics usage, your brain simply throws its hands in the air & starts fabricating entire realities, entities, alternate planes of being, cycles, destinies and so on. A salvia trip can put you in another man's body for what feels like 8 full years, then warp you back instantly like nothing happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpb_D6qyVSU

Meditation acts on the same brain regions as these drugs. Once you get beyond a certain point in meditation, it'll just start filling in the blanks and showing you wild shit that has no basis in reality. Something meditators/Buddhists don't often bring up is that you can get random hallucinations from meditation including someone whispering your name in your ear. This is how people get psychosis from meditating, they focus on the voices. If you can believe in Buddhist doctrine, more power to you. Stuff like the jhanas and stream entry are obviously real things that can happen and all you need is help getting to those points

>>23612007
trusting the speculations of drug addict atheists to understand about budhism is a big mistake

and there is no hallucination in buddhism. Hallucination occurs in shamanisms like In hinduism and Mahayana because they do take drugs during their soma rituals. Buddhism doesnt do the soma ritual and doesnt venerate drugs. If anything drugs are forbidden by the buddha.

>>23611993
seethe more jew

>>23612034
>and there is no hallucination in buddhism.
There is. You can hallucinate from normal vipassana, it happens all the time. They've even got a convention of calling those voices demons due to how frequently they appear.

>>23612059
vipassana is about insights into the conditioned aggreates, you can't hallucinate form this lol, that's the opposite of what insights are supposed to give you

>>23612079
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=hearing+voices+during+meditation
Here you go lad

>>23611782
Well my belief is rebirth isn't true. And that you're ontologically gay.

>>23611990
>>23611993
I don't know who's jewing who anymore. My rule of thumb is if it makes jews seethe, it must be good. Jesus makes jews seethe and not Buddha, therefore I'll hedge my bets on Christ.

>>23612416
It obviously hasn’t given you any insight into truth or any sort of discernment or you wouldn’t be relying on jews to tell you what is true.

>>23609832
Exactly. People who dismiss rebirth and karma dont understand Buddhism and are just larping. They cant see the truth, they are attached to concepts like materialism or worse worship the current science. They cant understand and they cant break from the super basic notion of grasping/desire/longing. If they understood this core principle of grasping, they would become enlightened instantly and be able to reach nirvana.

>>23611884
Hinduism don't predate buddhism, some vedas predate buddhism, advaita is even younger than yogachara buddhism, a late school of mahayana buddhism, and the influences of the madhyamaka school on gaudapapa are well know

>>23609794
>Buddhism isnt actively harmful
lol, lmao even

>>23612660
>Hinduism don't predate buddhism, some vedas predate buddhism
Yes, Hinduism predates Buddhism. The Vedas and Upanishads are the main scripture of Hinduism and both the Vedas and some of the early major Upanishads which set out the major ideas of Vedanta like non-dualism etc pre-date the life of Buddha. For every Vedantic major doctrine there is an Upanishadic verse already describing it. Advaita is just a formalization of what the Upanishads already say even on a surface level.

To say that the Vedas and Upanishads are not Hinduism is just a ridiculous cope. By that standard Buddha's teachings wasn't Buddhism because later Buddhism is so different (which is obviously ridiculous).

> and the influences of the madhyamaka school on gaudapapa are well know
This is debatable, however it's clear that Gaudapada understands his own ideas as coming from the Upanishads and as being distinct from Buddhism.

>>23609832
>The fuck is the point of Buddhism if there's no rebirth?
Rather
>The fuck is the point of anything if there's no le bad?
Man desires to torture themselves.

>>23612909
Dumb. Most of the ideas for Hinduism was fleshed out during or after Buddha. The "Hinduism" during Buddha's time was made up of animal sacrificing vedic tribes with various animistic rituals and degeneracy. There were only 3 vedas during the time too not 4 like today. The upanishads are a collection written throughout history. There are multiple parts of which only some were written before and others clearly written after buddha as a rebuttal to Buddha

>giving a shit what some dalit thought 2500 years ago

Lol, lmao. And you just KNOW he open defecated.

>>23613433
Apparently he got pissed on one time.

>>23612909
>The Vedas and Upanishads are the main scripture of Hinduism
By that reasoning islam is 3500 old, because the core mythos of their religion is in the Torah, but that would ignore thousands of years of transformation and cultural change, hinduism is nothing like the cults Brahmins practiced in thr times of the vedas

Quanzhen School Taoism mogs Buddhism; read The Book of Balance and Harmony

>>23613535
From what I know of Huayan, Tiantai and Chan, they are probably interchangeable with Taoist philosophical schools due to the mutual influence. I'm not particularly well learned in Chinese Buddhism myself but the tradition is an admirable offshoot of the dharma

Why is there always a token Christian or Platonist in these threads now?

Hinduism, Buddhism and all these dharmic religion share one concept that connect to all that different from abrahamic religion in which they believe in cyclical universe. This is the core things. It has major implications if you believe universe is cyclical and eternal. You basically reincarnated infinitely in an eternal suffering. So the goal is always liberation of this world cause cyclical world is sucks bad. That the ultimate goal. So Buddhism and Hinduism belief in cyclical universe and cope to escape it. Liberation. Buddhism by reaching nirvana. Hindu by mokhsha

All religious figures are nothing more than characters used by ancient scholars as a catalyst for their teachings. Like how Plato used Socrates. That’s not say Socrates didn’t exist, but rather the historical man is not important. Plato used Socrates and other people as characters as a dialogue as a vehicle for the teachings. The real writers preferred not to be known. This includes Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Zoroaster etc. all characters used as tools by the real teachers. Hell there’s no concrete proof Plato himself was a real person.


Another thing you must understand is the Buddhist sutra library is vast, the most vast of any religious work. It can easily be attributed to all the sayings of the Buddha but in reality they were written by multiple different people across centuries throughout various nations. India, Nepal, china, Tibet all made contributions to the sutra canon.

The takeaway here and main point of Buddhism is in all things use discernment, just because you read this or that in this or that sutra to blindly take it as law is foolish, for all is empty and the diamond of the mind is the only light in this world and the only “thing” that can give meaning. Words on a page only mean as much as you believe they do.

In Buddhism practice is king and practice always trumps scripture.

>>23609785
I don't think nirvana means absolute non existence as you would think of it, but instead a state of pure bliss where "you" no longer exist in the traditional sense but instead have achieved a state of total oneness with everything. Also the famous story of Buddha leaving the palace to live amongst the poor is a story about hardship and struggle as an aesthetic, not merely "being a neet." The middle way seeks to balance the extremes of the life of the aesthetic wanderer and the life of attachment, so as to transcend both. This is difficult to understand as a westerner whose culture is very capitalistic and focused around consumption. Buddhism doesn't advocate for life denialism but actually enganging with life as a atudent and as a teacher. Also you ignore the vital differences between the competing schools of Buddhism. Monks are merely teachers. Monks also spend a lot of time working and doing things like martial arts. As well as teaching and studying and producing some of the greatest works of art in all of history. Despite having supposedly read his teachings you are still profoundly ignorant to his philosophy. Buddhism carved the way for a whole new way life and forever has cemented it's role in history as a major religion that revolutionized an entire continent.

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You think nirvana is a state of non existence but it's completely the opposite. It is a state of total existence and sublime joy.

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>>23609785
Happiness is integral to Buddhism.

>>23609838
>horrific universe of endless suffering
This feels incredibly accurate, yet people around me just don't seem to care. They get on with their lives, content in their little plastic world.
Are East Asians all extremely neurotic?

>>23617082
Most lay Buddhists just do basic practices to make good Metta for a future rebirth. I doubt many have even properly studied the suttas anyway.

>>23609927
wow I was on the fence but now I have read this /pol/ screenshot saying that a thing buddhists do is also a thing a naughty corporate recommends people do I realize buddhism is hecking bad!

>>23611240
>Yes, but this has no cosmic and ontological effect, there is no right or wrong beyond an immediate subjective sensation of pain.
What about the mental imprint that act leaves on you?

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>>23610767
It’s identical to the Buddhas story of how he reached enlightenment, but without the unique teachings. He still teaches renunciation of life, but for faith in Christ instead of reaching Nirvana

>>23611356
>That's what nibbana is. The conditions for further rebirth have been removed and the process stops. No self or soul was annihilated, there was no atman in the first place. Just a condition sustained by ignorance and craving that made a process of rebirth continue. Buddha showed how to stop the process.
This is the most nihilistic and Lovecraftian ontology imaginable. Truly the Rick and Morty of religions.

>>23619188
>just kill yourself to achieve parinirvana bros

>>23610491
>Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all say that the Infinite created everything.
They don't, they claim that a demon called YHWH create everything

>>23610491
>Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all say that the Infinite created everything.
They don't, they claim that a demon called YHWH create everything

>>23619188
>This is the most nihilistic and Lovecraftian ontology imaginable
Only for people trapped in the dogma of a soul/god

>>23609785
In placse where Buddhism is popular people are literally shitting on the streets. Yes, I mean California.

>>23609785
>extremely based, or extremely cringe
It's in a constant superposition of both.

>>23620053
If there's no God then existence is a mistake and we live in a cosmos of infinite horror and meaninglessness. If anyone truly internalized a belief in an ontology like that (no God, no immortal soul, no possible meaning or redemption for our suffering: only release and forgetfulness), they eventually would literally become psychotic from the sheer horror of it. But you want to tell others this is true for some twisted satisfaction while desperately coping internally in one way or another, like all atheists must inevitably do.

Buddhism wants to end suffering, but what about pleasure? was Buddha against sex?

>>23620364
he was a baller prince with a harem and impregnated a girl