You've been at this for a year, and you still only have opinions stemming from your ego instead of actual arguments. Are you going to post those AI slop images in conjunction with your gish galloping non-sense? It's also very telling that you only go after Christianity, seeing as that is the truth. inb4seethe

>>24752137
What if Vajrayana is right, after all?

>>24752217
>It's also very telling that you only go after Christianity, seeing as that is the truth
Prove it

>>24752217
>But all Christians have been taught that ancient Israel had the right — and even the sacred duty — to exterminate the Amalekites, “man and woman, babe and suckling” because they stood in the way of Israel’s conquest of Canaan (1Samuel 15:3).

>All Christians are expected to stand with Moses when, in Numbers 31, he ordered his men to slaughter all the Midianites, as a punishment for having encouraged the Israelites to intermarry with the Moabites. Moses was enraged with the army commanders for sparing the women and the children, but finally allowed them to keep for themselves “the young girls who have never slept with a man.” The booty amounted to thirty-two thousand girls, of which Yahweh required 0.1 percent as his own “portion”, offered to him presumably as holocausts, together with Yahweh’s portion of oxen, cattle, donkeys and sheep.

Sid couldn’t hang with ascetics

>>24752217
>The social position of captive women varied widely among cultures, from abject slaves to concubines to secondary wives to full spouses.”[1] In ancient Israel, “abject slaves” seems to have been the case. “Full spouses” was out of the question, since the whole justification for the massacre was to prevent intermarriage. Sex with non-Israelites is fine, as long as “no bastard shall enter the assembly of Yahweh, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation” (Deuteronomy 23:3).

>In Judges 19-21, the rape of the concubine of a Levite by the Benjaminites of the city of Gibeah leads to a blood feud, in the course of which the eleven other Israelite tribes slaughter everyone in Gibeah and set the city on fire, while six hundred Benjaminite warriors have escaped into the desert. Then, as a token of reconciliation, the Israelites decide to provide these Benjaminites with new wives. For that purpose, they attack the Israelite town of Jabesh-Gilead, which had refused to join the punitive expedition, and kill “all males and all those women who have ever slept with a man,” and gather four hundred virgins to offer the Benjaminites.

>When these stories were written, there were civilizations in the Fertile Crescent — meaning civilized peoples, with moral values. Despite their legendary brutality, the Assyrians did not slaughter the defeated Israelites, but deported and resettled them. Later the Babylonians allowed their Judean captives to stick together and prosper on the riverbanks of the Euphrates. Yet the Israelites and the Judeans chose to record and cherish their gruesome stories of indiscriminate massacre and child-trafficking as part of their sacred traditions.

>>24752137
You're stuck in your ego if ya wanna fight xtians online. Thich Naht Hahn one of greatest recent masters was quite ecumenical.

>>24752217
>Exodus 13:12-13 commands: “you shall dedicate to Yahweh every son that opens the womb; and all the male firstlings of your animals shall belong to Yahweh.” It adds that the first-born of a donkey can be “redeemed by a sheep,” and that the same must be done for the first-born of a human: “Every first-born son you must redeem.” This is repeated in Exodus 34:19-20.[9] “Redeem” means “buy back”; in the context of a religious sacrifice, it means that the first-born son is sacrificed symbolically while replaced on the altar by an animal (as was Abraham’s son Isaac).

>If these verses are open to interpretation, Exodus 22:28-29 removes the ambiguity: “You shall give me the first-born of your sons. You must do the same with your oxen and your sheep; for seven days the firstling may stay with its mother, but on the eighth day you must give it to me.” This clarifies that the commandment is the same for farm animals and for humans. It also specifies that the first-born is to be sacrificed on the eighth day after his birth.

>What is puzzling is that, in Leviticus and Jeremiah, child sacrifices are said to be offered to Molek (or Molech) but in the name of Yahweh and in his temple. For example: “Anyone … who gives any of his children to Molek, will be put to death, [for] he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name” (Leviticus 20:2-3). This apparent paradox has been solved by Swiss biblical scholar Thomas Römer: the word MLK, vocalized as molek in the Hebrew Masoretic version and melek in the Greek Septuagint, means “king” (malik in Arabic), and it is applied more than fifty times to Yahweh himself. This means that Molek was originally none other than Yahweh himself.

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>>24752518
>>24752526
>>24752532
>
I'm gonna simplify this for you: if someone quoted a character from a book you were familiar with out of context, before the plot had been resolved, while dealing with their son who repeatedly shamed, rejected them & sinned, would you take that as real criticism or tell them to read the whole thing this time instead of taking things out of context?

Buddhism is unironically satanic

>>24752590
>Christ’s teaching to “store up treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20) is alien to Yahweh. He is the Greedy One, who wants “the treasures of all the nations” amassed into his Jerusalem residence: “Mine is the silver, mine the gold!” (Haggai 2:8). “The wealth of all the surrounding nations will be heaped together: gold, silver, clothing, in vast quantity” (Zechariah 14:14). Interestingly, according to 1Kings 10:14, the amount of gold hoarded each year into Salomon’s temple was “666 talents of gold”—the “number of the Beast” in Revelation 13:18!

>>24752590
>As a matter of fact, Satan is hardly distinguished from Yahweh in the Tanakh. He is called an “angel of Yahweh” in Numbers 22 and 32. In 2Samuel 24, Yahweh incites David to do evil, while the role is given to Satan in the same episode told in 1Chronicles 21, where Yahweh, “the angel of Yahweh”, and Satan are used interchangeably. There is also no trace in the Tanakh of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, as in Persian monotheism. Happiness and misfortune, peace and war, health and sickness, abundance and famine, fertility and infertility, all have their unique and direct source in the capricious will of Yahweh. In his own words, “I form the light and I create the darkness, I make well-being, and I create disaster, I, Yahweh, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).

>>24752590
>Naturally, there are moral precepts here and there in the Bible. But on the whole, it is a misunderstanding to believe that Yahweh expects from his people a moral superiority. The only criterion for approval by Yahweh is obedience to his arbitrary laws and to his antisocial or genocidal commands. To slaughter treacherously hundreds of prophets of Baal is good, because it is the will of Yahweh (1Kings 18). To show mercy to the king of the Amalekites is bad, because when Yahweh says, “kill everyone,” he means “everyone” (1Samuel 15).

>>24752590
>What Israelites are asked, in fact, is to reproduce towards other nations Yahweh’s murderous sociopathy toward other gods. The war code of Deuteronomy 20 commands to exterminate “any living thing” in the conquered cities of Canaan. In practice, the rule is extended to all people who resist the Israelites in their conquest.

>Yahweh is the cruelest of gods, but he would have us believe that all other gods are abominations. Biblical history portrays all nations but Israel as repulsive idolaters. But they were not.

>Reversed accusation of genocidal intention is typical of Israel, a country with nuclear warheads pointed at Iran, whose leaders have always denied having any nuclear arsenal at all, but who hysterically urges the world to stop Iran’s supposed nuclear military program and determination to erase Israel from the maps. It would be laughable if Israel were just paranoid. But Israel is the psychopath among nations, and that means a tremendous capacity to manipulate, intimidate, corrupt morally, and get what they want.

>>24752602
>In the Garden of Eden allegory, Yahweh forbids man access to “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). The Hebrew word for “knowledge”, daat, translates in Greek as gnosis, meaning inner awareness or insight rather than intellectual knowledge, so that “knowledge of good and evil” can be accurately translated as “moral conscience”, which is man’s capacity to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, in any particular situation. So that the prohibition of the knowledge of good and evil simply means the inhibition of moral conscience.

>To contextualize that Genesis story, we must recall that Egyptian and Persian religions taught that immortality is the reward for the blameless life. Since immortality was synonymous with divinity, being immortal could be expressed as “being among the gods”, or “being like the gods”. But in the Hebrew Bible, it is the serpent, a liar and deceiver, who tempts Adam and Eve into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with the guarantee that, “the day you eat it you will not die,” but “your eyes will open and you will be like gods, who know good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). The serpent speaks like the religious wisdom of great religions. The Hebrew scribes can present him as a liar because, for them, immortality (“not dying”) only makes sense physically: Yahweh, they claim, intended Adam and Eve to be physically immortal on earth, and provided no otherworld for their afterlife. From this materialistic standpoint, the scribes denounce the promise of immortality through knowledge of good and evil as deceptive, and implicitly portray the Babylonian, Persian and Egyptian gods as liars.

>We have been educated for so many generations by this story, and are so used to assuming that the serpent of Genesis is the satanic deceiver, that it is hard to see the Torah’s message for what it really was: a direct attack against the higher religions and their moral teaching that knowledge and practice of good and evil is the way to the blessed afterlife.

>>24752518
>>But all Christians have been taught that ancient Israel had the right — and even the sacred duty — to exterminate the Amalekites, “man and woman, babe and suckling” because they stood in the way of Israel’s conquest of Canaan
Nobody has been taught that; that is a moronic statement. This is why the Israelites were commanded to "exterminate" the Amalekites
>"Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you; he did not fear God"
But even so, this "extermination" is purely hyperbolic. We also read in Joshua 10:40
>40 So Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded,
referencing the 'total destruction' of the Canaanites. We read in the very first sentence in the Book of Judges,
> After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, “Who of us is to go up first to fight against the Canaanites?”
You have to actually be trolling if you think "total destruction" or "kill every breathing creature" is a genuine command from the Lord and not a rhetorical/poetical device on the part of the writer or at the very least, only the ones who actually committed the transgressions.
Indeed, the Israelites did kill and wage war against the Amalekites; but they did not commit atrocities. It was justice, and it was reserved for the actual attackers which would have been soldiers. Unless you think the women and children of the Amalekite tribe participated in the ambush.
>>All Christians are expected to stand with Moses when, in Numbers 31, he ordered his men to slaughter all the Midianites, as a punishment for having encouraged the Israelites to intermarry with the Moabites. Moses was enraged with the army commanders for sparing the women and the children, but finally allowed them to keep for themselves “the young girls who have never slept with a man.” The booty amounted to thirty-two thousand girls, of which Yahweh required 0.1 percent as his own “portion”, offered to him presumably as holocausts, together with Yahweh’s portion of oxen, cattle, donkeys and sheep.
The soldier may keep the girls who didn't participate in the sexual seduction; yes, that makes sense. They don't become sex slaves if that is what you are implying. A soldier might marry them after a month of mourning with her hair shaved and nails trimmed, have them as their servant or assimilate them into the tribe. The boys were ordered to be murdered most likely because of trauma both spiritual and physical from the war. It would be fanciful to presume that the boys would not kill the very men who killed their fathers. Also, God probably commanded the destruction of their body so, He can save their soul given their unfair upraising.

Sorry, your jargon word salad doesn't mean anything to me.

>>24752518
>>24752526
>>24752532
>>24752660
>>24752666
>>24752669
>>24752705
Yup, gish galloping. It would take me 10x as many replies to refute the many fallacies and lies, but refuting one is enough to show that you aren't serious. You also copied and pasted that from "American Buddhism" and "New Age Islam". That would sound about right.
>>This apparent paradox has been solved by Swiss biblical scholar Thomas Römer: the word MLK, vocalized as molek in the Hebrew Masoretic version and melek in the Greek Septuagint, means “king” (malik in Arabic), and it is applied more than fifty times to Yahweh himself. This means that Molek was originally none other than Yahweh himself.
Lol, lmao even. This is what I call "Because I want it to be true it has to be true because it might be true given my distorted and uncritical view of reality" fallacy. Thomas Romer's view is not the concensus.

>>24752893
Vade retro, Satana!

>>24752137
Lol. Condemning Christianity as a crutch while championing Buddhism is peak irony.
>If I just close my eyes several hours a day I won't have to feel any bad things anymore! I'm trying to flee my own life because of uh emptiness or something not as gigacope!

>>24752526
>>The booty amounted to thirty-two thousand girls, of which Yahweh required 0.1 percent as his own “portion”, offered to him presumably as holocausts, together with Yahweh’s portion of oxen, cattle, donkeys and sheep.
Women were not holocausts, that is burned to death. They were only killed by the sword

>>24752137
>sky daddy
"People" who say this lack fear of God, either out of ignorance or pride. OP should know that ignorance and pride go against Buddhism.

>>24752137
The whole contemplative guru thing just feels like a bad way to live. The underground man’s ‘all is illusory’ or when the devil visits Ivan and starts talking about the details in Tolstoy and wanting to be incarnated as ‘some merchant’s wife weighing 18 stone’ just to continue experiencing life. It’s better to live with a purpose like when Fedka defends Stavrogin before Pyotr Stepanovitch

>>24752137
Why don't you kill yourself and end your dukkha. If you're trying to be a bodhicuckva, you're wasting your time. I vow never to be enlightened, even if it takes me to the depths of Avici hell, just so no bodhisattva can achieve their goal.

>>24752137
How does compassion emanate from nothing?

>>24752973
>Why don't you kill yourself
Because It Doesn't Work Like That

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>>24752973
>one shots an entire religious tradition
>you were born Buddha, it's not possible for you to unbecome Buddha.
>no limits on venomous spiders consumed.

Nothing personal kiddo.

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>>24752137
>Made to desire and not to abandon the transcendent height by the things already attained, it [the soul] makes its way upward without ceasing, ever through its prior accomplishments renewing its intensity for the flight. Activity directed toward virtue causes its capacity to grow through exertion; this kind of activity alone does not slacken its intensity by the effort, but increases it.
I'm not even a christcuck, but Buddhism got btfo by St. Gregory Nyssen without him even knowing it.

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>>24752137
I'll take picrel and >>24752999 over your beach-shitter/dog-eater nonsense any day.

>>24752137
Xenobuddhism > basic Buddhism and Christianity

Would u rather the Beatific Vision or nothing.

>>24752999
>I'm not even a christcuck, but Buddhism got btfo by St. Gregory Nyssen without him even knowing it.
Many such cases

>>24753021
Racism is not compatible with your Christian faith.

>>24752518
Ancient Israel is just the apostolic churches, rabbi.

>>24753057
Many such cases of Buddhism getting btfo? You're right.

>>24753063
Racism is no less compatible with Christianity than it is with Buddhism.

>>24752137
By slandering Christianity, you slander Buddhism, which is not a religion where it's common to proselytize. For a Buddhist, a good Christian is someone who will probably be reborn in one of the heaven realms, which is kind of what they want anyway. They aren't an enemy, and as you can see with the replies you only create animosity. If their karma leads then to Buddhism in either this life or the next, they will come, otherwise leave them be.

>>24753021
>>24752999
>my life-denying religion is better than your life-denying religion
yes goyim... stop reproducing..

>>24752137
I think I'm a Christian for the same reason you're a Buddhist. I like the human quality and comfort of Jesus. A Buddhist enlightenment would dissolve you, but I don't want to be dissolved, I want to be me and perfect. God incarnated onto humanity. Jesus. Christians etc. I think this has something to do with the idea in the gospels that children are closer to God than wise men. They're innocent and like themselves and just want to be themselves in a good world and be free.

>>24753329
Yeah, leave them to slaughter innocent Palestinians? Don't be a scum bag.

>>24753484
If you just want to be a shit cunt, read about Pure Land School. If you give them enough money, a Bodhisattva will intercede for you.

>>24752137
Few people have heard about the Rohinya Genocide

>>24753491
I have no idea what any of that means and from the tone of it i don't want to.

>>24752602
Is poojeet shit

>>24753491
>If you give them enough money,
Same as with every religion/cult, innit?

>>24753082
Are you kidding? The whole religion is based on xenophobia and ethnocentrism of the "chosen people"

I actually really like Buddhism inspired art but I don't agree with the religion at all
Essays in idleness and the Hojoki are great

>>24755112
No, some of us want your children, to raise then until 7, so we may show you the man.
Some of us want to infect you with memes, for the memes sake, or for your own sake, we can think better for you wholesale.
Some of us want to draw water and chop wood, and perhaps we are the most evil of us all.

JUST SENT $19,999.99 NOW AND THE INFINITE STOREHOUSE OF WISDOM WILL FREE YOU NEXT LIFETIME is baby games compared to some of us.

>>24755794
Why do you dislike buddhism?

>>24753493
It has nothing to do with Buddhism

>>24752137
I find Buddhism conceptually cowardly, because instead of trying to elevate the self to a higher more robust form, it simply wants to destroy the self to get away from pain. it is it is directed towards the negative objective.

>>24758254
>trying to elevate the self
there's your mistake right there, thinking that there is a self

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>>24758254
>>24758512
You know it's possible to read even one sutta from the pali canon before you claim that you know what buddha said, right?
The self is specifically raised to the level of the upanishadic cosmic self within the process of buddhist insight, but at that point still denied to be the self because it still does not meet the qualifications of unchanging. There is not a denial of the lack of self, but the denial that any lavbel that attempts to define the self will lead inevitably to suffering

If someone on /lit/ just read MN 22 it would stop all of this nonsense. Imagine if someone came in claiming to critique the bible but only had read one random chapter of Acts. This is how buddhist threads are on /lit/, it's actually pathetic.

>>24758254
>>24758512
Two mistaken inferences are particularly relevant here. The first concerns the range of the not-self teaching. Some have argued that, because the Buddha usually limits his teachings on not-self to the five aggregates — form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness — he leaves open the possibility that something else may be regarded as self. Or, as the argument is often phrased, he denies the limited, temporal self as a means of pointing to one's identity with the larger, unlimited, cosmic self. However, in this discourse the Buddha explicitly phrases the not-self teaching in such a way as to refute any notion of cosmic self. Instead of centering his discussion of not-self on the five aggregates, he focuses on the first four aggregates plus two other possible objects of self-identification, both more explicitly cosmic in their range: (1) all that can be seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect; and (2) the cosmos as a whole, eternal and unchanging. In fact, the Buddha holds this last view up to particular ridicule, as the teaching of a fool, for two reasons that are developed at different points in this discourse: (1) If the cosmos were "me," then it must also be "mine," which is obviously not the case. (2) There is nothing in the experience of the cosmos that fits the bill of being eternal, unchanging, or that deserves to be clung to as "me" or "mine."

The second mistaken inference is that, given the thoroughness with which the Buddha teaches not-self, one should draw the inference that there is no self. This inference is treated less explicitly in this discourse, although it is touched upon briefly in terms of what the Buddha teaches here and how he teaches.

In terms of what: He explicitly states he cannot envision a doctrine of self that, if clung to, would not lead to sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair.

Thus the view "I have no self" is just as much a doctrine of self as the view "I have a self." Because the act of clinging involves what the Buddha calls "I-making" — the creation of a sense of self — if one were to cling to the view that there is no self, one would be creating a very subtle sense of self around that view (see AN 4.24). But, as he says, the Dhamma is taught for "the elimination of all view-positions, determinations, biases, inclinations, & obsessions; for the stilling of all fabrications; for the relinquishing of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding."

>>24758572
>>24758562
This is why the tathagatagharba doctrine is so important. Thanissaro rejects it as 'buddha-nature' despite those terms being two separate concepts, and actually just refutes brahman-esque ideads of the self.
The self is a womb, growing with whatever definitions we choose to place on it..People who want to 'elevate the self higher' will get exactly what they want, what they won't get is eternal security.

Reminder that the end goal of Buddhism is the complete annihilation of your existence. Literally the most evil religion.

>>24758610
>the thing explicitly condemned by the buddha is buddhism
brilliant board

>>24758562
>>24758572
fren, i can find you dozens of references from the sutta clearly stating the no-self doctrine. this is, after all, the fundamental teaching of the buddher.

>>24758623
Find one, just one, where he explicitly states that no self exists. As anyone knows he famously refused to comment on either the existence or the non-existence of the self
>"Now then, Venerable Gotama, is there a self?"
>When this was said, the Blessed One was silent.
>"Then is there no self?"
>A second time, the Blessed One was silent.
As even a second of reading the suttas will show you, anatta is a method for stripping away ideas of what people conventionally define to be the self.

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>>24758512
>>24758562
I dont respect or subscribe to this. There is no a priori prior to the self. all perception is first sensed through this "thing" called a self, everything past this fact comprises of degrees of speculation and correlations that comprise of post self assumptions like sense and logic. Trying to look behind the self is still a post self activity.

to see before the self pre-assumes a seer

>>24758632
Why do you think he would adamantly refuse to say yes, there is a self? Obviously if something so non-controversial is true, he would simply confirm it. And yet he refuses, because he knows it's not true: there is no self. This is his fundamental teaching which cannot be stated too openly for political reasons, but which is what an arahant is supposed to logically discern. Without accepting that fundamental truth, one can never become enlightened.

>>24758642
Self is a view, but that doesn't mean nothing exists. Thai forest defines Nirvana as the true self.

There is, monks, an unborn[1] — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned.[2]

>>24758670
yeah but i don't want to be a changeless abstract metaphysical entity, i want to move around and do things, fuck chicks, jack off

>>24758572
>then it must also be "mine," which is obviously not the case
why?
>In terms of what: He explicitly states he cannot envision a doctrine of self that, if clung to, would not lead to sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair.
isnt the object here still the negative, to get rid of something rather than gain something? the "i" exists even if in this turn of phrase it is merely a convenience. And a convenance I would wager precedes all the other things mentioned.

>>24758670
>Thai forest defines Nirvana as the true self.
And? The Vajranists think you get to Nirvana by having sex with a tantric consort. You can even commit murder as a part of ritualist practice. Are we to take that as what the Buddha taught?

>>24758691
>you get to Nirvana by having sex with a tantric consort
how can i join this religion? are the consorts provided or do I need to bring my own?

>>24758689
>why?
cause a supernova to occur right now then

I cut a bit out for fitting in a 4chan post
>In terms of what: He explicitly states he cannot envision a doctrine of self that, if clung to, would not lead to sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair. He does not list all the possible doctrines of self included under this statement, but MN 2 provides at least a partial list:

>I have a self... I have no self... It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self... or... This very self of mine — the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions — is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will endure as long as eternity. This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress.
>isnt the object here still the negative, to get rid of something rather than gain something
Nirvana is seen as the end of suffering, it's the goal in itself
>the "i" exists even if in this turn of phrase it is merely a convenience
In this line yes, but buddhist training involves letting go of the the fixed notion of I. What you're saying only makes sense out of context of the rest of the canon.

>>24758691
>Are we to take that as what the Buddha taught
If they adhere to the vinaya then possibly. Fortunately most "monks" have abandoned it, including the tantrics, allowing us to immediately disregard their teachings

>>24758733
>>why?
>cause a supernova to occur right now then
I misread you, sorry. The simple answer is because buddism denies that which you have no direct control over can be something you define as the self. If you were the cosmos you could control it. If you cannot control something how can you possibly define it as what you are, it's madness.

>>24758694
If you are a celebrity like Richard Gere or Robert Thurman, I'm sure you get assigned a young nubile one from the stable of consorts every time you visit.

>>24753490
He said a good christian, like softy old world types, not a yankee fundamentalist

Is Buddhism not just applied absurdism dressed up in a particular regional cosmological folklore?

>>24759005
no because they believe in non-self, an absurdist woud also question the notion of non-self as well.

>>24759010
But I thought that "there is no self" is a doctrine too?

>>24759012
Yah, thats what I said.

>>24759015
But if "non-self" doesn't mean "there is no self" why do they call it "non-self"?

>>24759025
Stop confusing your "self"

Kids today can't into non-dualism.

>>24759005
It's religious pessimism, as opposed to philosophical pessimism like Schopenhauer's doctrine of the negation of the will to live.

>>24758614
99% of people who critique a religion, no matter what the religion is, have not read the canonical texts of said religion, much less actually spoke to a practicioner.

>>24758691
>thai forest
no they don't

>>24758767
>The simple answer is because buddism denies that which you have no direct control over can be something you define as the self
This reasoning is just based on assuming or begging the question that the self would be an agent, which it actually may not be.

>>24758572
> (1) If the cosmos were "me," then it must also be "mine," which is obviously not the case.
This is just assuming that the identification with the ‘all’ would be naturally self-evident, but there is actually no reason why that would necessarily be true.


2) There is nothing in the experience of the cosmos that fits the bill of being eternal, unchanging, or that deserves to be clung to as "me" or "mine."
Self-luminous partless awareness is eternal and unchanging, regardless of whatever else appears or is present, that’s what ‘you’ are. It’s spontaneously present, uncaused, pristine and free of any ignorance.

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>>24752137
If buddhism is a superior religion than why is it that every country thats practiced it not thrived as much as Christian nations?

Buddhism is probably 2nd best but Christianity is the supreme religion just based on the fact that it is a religion meant to bring in the most morally superior community and look out for your fellow man.

Buddhism makes you a hermit and tells you to keep to yourself and stay away from all things from the world and stay the same from the moment you are born.

Christianity is supreme.

>>24759631
>awareness is eternal and unchanging
this 'awareness' you speak of, to what does it belong? just humans?

>>24759856
economic development actually doesn't have anything at all to do with the major religion. you can go back in history and find christian natures poor as shit while muslim ones were rich and buddhist ones rich. even today, historically buddhist countries like japan, korea or china are doing better than most christian countries.

>>24760479
>natures
nations

If Christianity had anything to do with it, Latin America would be as rich as Europe and N. America

>>24759856
Christianity opens the door to enlightenment secularism and deconverting. It has the highest number of people leaving the faith of any religion on Earth. It's like a pipeline to atheism.

>>24760473
>to what does it belong?
all living beings

>>24760541
That's because it's such a false religion, teaching xenophobia and ethnosupremacy of the Jews. Imagine not being Jewish and still holding them up as your superiors, as the chosen people.

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>>24760611
True

>>24759005
No, because absurdism is for teenagers who just learned what the word "philosophy" means

Buddhism = Christianity = Platoism

>>24760639
I think Buddhism woudl reject any notion of Platonic forms

>>24760604
Even a protozoa? Or a virus?

>>24758733
>>24758767
I would argue that the self is awareness, not what you can control. the universe is mine as far as it can be perceived.

>Nirvana is seen as the end of suffering, it's the goal in itself
this may be true in theory, but I hear much of the actual discourse focusing on the epicurean element of suffer lessening, which seems very crude. TBF thats also true of christian discourse focusing on humility, when humility should simply be an instrument of getting closer to the one rather than an ends in itself.

>>24761402
Yes, but if that living being doesn’t have a complex enough of a neural anatomy to reflect the light of awareness then it doesn’t have the same experience of awareness being present in the same way that humans and animals do, since this subjective experience of it being present arises not from awareness itself but rather from when the mind is illuminated by awareness (i.e. the mind experiences its own illumination by the presence of said awareness).

This awareness is self-knowing or self-illuminating in an immediate and non-conceptual manner, and this is true regardless of whether one is speaking of the awareness inside rocks, animals, plants, bugs, bacteria etc (its all the same one undivided awareness anyway), but the mental sensation (not non-conceptual awareness) of being present is a byproduct of said self-shining awareness being in the presence of something capable of reflecting its light (i.e. intellects or minds). In the absence of this reflecting medium, there is no mental sensations produced and the awareness inside a rock etc continues abiding in moksha/nirvana as it always has and will. And even inside the creatures that have minds, their awareness is abiding in exactly the same way as nirvanic, free, untouched by ignorance or suffering etc, it is just through mutual indiscriminate that people falsely attribute properties of the mind like suffering etc to the awareness that illuminates and dwells within the mind.

There are really not separate discrete awarenesses that are parceled out and which ‘belong to’ individual entities. There is just one all-pervasive unconditioned pristine awareness which is forever free and unbound, its present within all phenomena equally both sentient and insentient things; it’s just that sentient beings with a complex enough neural anatomy are capable of reflecting this light in such a way that produces the mental experience of awareness ostensibly being seated in the body. That awareness seated in the body is really just the same one infinite awareness that is present everywhere though.

>>24762376
>There are really not separate discrete awarenesses that are parceled out and which ‘belong to’ individual entities.
So there is no karma then?

>>24752137
When the Jesuits arrived in Japan, they helped the Shintos fight the corrupt Buddhist monks. Anything can be corrupted by sinful followers, including Christianity and Buddhism.
>>24752518
I guarantee most Christians do not fanatically worship and defend one line from the Old Testament similar to how most Jews do not fanatically worship and defend sucking eight day old baby dicks.

>>24762912
>So there is no karma then?
In that perspective (which is Advaita Vedanta), karma is generated by and clings to the subtle body of individuals, and the subtle body is essentially constituted by the intellect/mind. Each intellect or subtle body has some ignorance associated with itself (sometimes called the causal body or karana sthula) and this subtle body under the state of ignorance is what transmigrates from body to body when a prior body dies. It's called the causal body because it's said to be connected with the re-emergence from dreamless sleep as well as the cause of further transmigration from body to body.

Awareness doesn't transmigrate but it just illuminates intellects as they enage in activities and travel from body to body when one dies. A subtle body may take on a new personality with new attributes in the next body but the karmic fruits from previous lives continue with it and make their effects felt, both in terms of what kind of body one is born into but also even effecting everyday events, but not in a total and complete deterministic sense.

There is a triad of gross body (sthula sarira), subtle body (sukshma sarira) and causal body (karana sthula), living beings are a composite formed out of these 3 bodies together with the animating or illuminating light of awareness. Realization or enlightenment occurs in the intellect or subtle body and it includes (among other things) sublating all the false notions rooted in avidya, this 'burns up' the further seed potential of that individual's causal body, i.e. it means that at death that individual's subtle body will no longer transmigrate and its constitutent elements will dissolve into a rudimentary state. The awareness that had been inhabiting that individual from within had already forever been free before this happens though and it remains free afterwards. That mind simply no longer has the subjective experience of reflecting that sentient light within itself and thereby producing dualistic experiences with all the associated suffering, it has terminated the cycle permanently.

>>24763138
So protozoa and virus have these subtle bodies? How does an animal improve its karma?

>>24763148
>So protozoa and virus have these subtle bodies?
The Upanishads don't say but they just mention people transmigrating into the status of gods, men, animals, plants and bugs if I recall correctly. I guess that it's possible but if there was no complex neural structure or its equivalent then the subtle body would just be sitting there and not really doing much if anything, not having any experiences.
>How does an animal improve its karma?
I don't know, I can make inferences based on the human conditon but these would just be guesses since the scriptures don't say. If there is a large accumulation of prior negative or degrading karma, then simply remaining in one's own condition and allowing those prior seeds to manifest their fruits without taking any new negative actions can lead to an overal improvement in one's situation, although it's debatale to what extent an animal could do this. An animal acting selflessly to care for its young or to share food etc without regard for itself would be an example of an act rooted in sattva guna that could produce good karma for example. Most animal behavior falls under rajas-guna though which is neither positive (uplifting) nor negative (degrading) but merely continues one further within Samsara.

>>24752137
>Christianity is this and that
>says who?
>m-me... t-the atheist...
not very credible, are you?

>>24763256
>people transmigrating into the status of gods, men, animals, plants and bugs
Where would all the extra souls come from since there are always more people in the world?

>An animal acting selflessly to care for its young
That's just propagating genes, innit?

>>24763282
Slightly more credible than a made up sky daddy

>>24752137
Christianity, by definition, is non-dualistic. You just haven't studied it.

None of what you said makes any sense to someone that has read even the most simple of apologists.

>>24763597
>Where would all the extra souls come from since there are always more people in the world?
there are so many in the universe and with multiple universes (which some texts talk about) there are effectively an infinite numeber so there can always be more from another part of the universe transmigrating to another part. Souls or the transmigrating bodies are without any temporal beginning. If there were an absence of proper bodies to inhabit then then souls would just remain in a latent unmanifest state until a proper vessel for them was created by the nature of Samsara to do so, just as they remain in this latent state every time a cycle of universes ends with a great dissolution before a long absence or voidness and then the re-emergence of a new universe. Liberation is not easy to attain so the innumnerable beings will never all be liberated.

>That's just propagating genes, innit?
That's a darwinian analysis, but from the perspective of the animal it doesn't perceive things that way but is motiavated by feelings of family, affection, brotherhood to help another without regard for oneself. Even rats have been known to attempt to save other non-relative rats that are drowning at great risk to themselves, this type of behavior corresponds to the sattva guna and good karma.

>>24752137
>Christianity just can't compete, it's too mired in theism, guilt, and this backward Western obsession with linear history, whereas Buddhism gives you a timeless, life‑affirming path out of Western culture's existential abyss.
>I've never read the Gospels and I have zero idea what I'm talking about
Cool
>Buddhism is life-affirming
This might be the most wrong sentence ever written about Buddhism and I'm trying to be nice

>>24752137
Making this comparison violates the tenets of buddhism

>>24752137
Right speech means avoiding four types of harmful speech:

>lies (words spoken with the intent of misrepresenting the truth);
>divisive speech (spoken with the intent of creating rifts between people);
>harsh speech (spoken with the intent of hurting another person’s feelings)
>idle chatter (spoken with no purposeful intent at all).

-

"How is one made impure in four ways by verbal action?

There is the case where a certain person tells lies. When he has been called to a town meeting, a group meeting, a gathering of his relatives, his guild, or of the royalty, if he is asked as a witness, ‘Come & tell, good man, what you know’: If he doesn’t know, he says, ‘I know.’ If he does know, he says, ‘I don’t know.’ If he hasn’t seen, he says, ‘I have seen.’ If he has seen, he says, ’I haven’t seen.’ Thus he consciously tells lies for his own sake, for the sake of another, or for the sake of a certain reward.

He engages in divisive speech. What he has heard here he tells there to break those people apart from these people here. What he has heard there he tells here to break these people apart from those people there. Thus breaking apart those who are united and stirring up strife between those who have broken apart, he loves conflict, delights in discord, enjoys division, speaks things that create disharmony.

He engages in harsh speech, speaking words that are insolent, cutting, mean to others, reviling others, provoking anger and preventing peace.

He engages in idle chatter, speaking out of season, what isn’t factual, words that are not worth treasuring.

This is how one is made impure in four ways by verbal action."

-

[1] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial [or: not connected with the goal], unendearing & disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

[2] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, unendearing & disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

[3] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing & disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

[4] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, but endearing & agreeable to others, he does not say them.

[5] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, but endearing & agreeable to others, he does not say them.

[6] In the case of words that the Tathāgata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, and endearing & agreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them. Why is that? Because the Tathāgata has sympathy for living beings.”

>>24752137
>This is the noble truth of stress:
Birth is stressful,
aging is stressful,
death is stressful;
sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair are stressful;
association with the unbeloved is stressful,
separation from the loved is stressful,
not getting what is wanted is stressful.
>The five clinging aggregates are stressful.

>This is the noble truth of the origination of stress:
The craving that makes for further becoming
— accompanied by passion and delight,
relishing now here and now there:
>Sensuality-craving,
>Becoming-craving,
>Nonbecoming-craving.
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/ShapeOfSuffering/Contents.html

And where does this craving, when arising, arise?
And where, when dwelling, does it dwell?
Whatever is endearing and alluring in terms of the world;
that is where this craving, when arising, arises.
That is where, when dwelling, it dwells.

>What is endearing and alluring in terms of the world?
The eye...The ear…
The nose…The tongue…
The body…The intellect…

Forms…Sounds…
Aromas…Tastes…
Tactile sensations…Ideas….

Eye-consciousness…Ear-consciousness…
Nose-consciousness…Tongue-consciousness…
Body-consciousness…Intellect-consciousness…

Eye-contact…Ear-contact…
Nose-contact…Tongue-contact…
Body-contact…Intellect-contact…

Feeling born of eye-contact…Feeling born of ear-contact…
Feeling born of nose-contact…Feeling born of tongue-contact…
Feeling born of body contact…Feeling born of intellect-contact…

Perception of forms…Perception of sounds…
Perception of aromas…Perception of tastes…
Perception of tactile sensations…Perception of ideas…

Intention for forms…Intention for sounds…
Intention for aromas…Intention for tastes…
Intention for tactile sensations…Intention for ideas…

Craving for forms…Craving for sounds…
Craving for aromas…Craving for tastes…
Craving for tactile sensations…Craving for ideas…

Thought directed at forms…Thought directed at sounds…
Thought directed at aromas…Thought directed at tastes…
Thought directed at tactile sensations…Thought directed at ideas…

Evaluation of forms…Evaluation of sounds…
Evaluation of aromas…Evaluation of tastes…
Evaluation of tactile sensations…Evaluation of ideas…

That is what is endearing and alluring in terms of the world.
That is where this craving, when arising, arises.
That is where, when dwelling, it dwells.

>This is the noble truth of the cessation of stress:
the remainderless fading and cessation,
renunciation, relinquishment, release, and
>letting go
of that very craving.
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/MindLikeFire/Section0007.html

>This is the noble truth of the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress: The Noble Eightfold Path
- Right View
- Right Resolve
- Right Speech
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Concentration
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/OnThePath/Section0000.html

>>24752137
There are these five facts that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained. Which five?

>“‘I am subject to aging, have not gone beyond aging.’

>“‘I am subject to illness, have not gone beyond illness.’ …

>“‘I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death.’ …

>“‘I will grow different, separate from all that is dear & appealing to me.’ …

>“‘I am the owner of my actions [kamma], heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.’ …

These are the five facts that one should reflect on often.

Now, a disciple of the noble ones considers this:
>I am not the only one subject to aging, who has not gone beyond aging...
>I am not the only one subject to illness, who has not gone beyond illness...
>I am not the only one subject to death, who has not gone beyond death...
>I am not the only one who will grow different, separate from all that is dear & appealing to me..
>I am not the only one who is the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, who has my actions as my arbitrator; who—whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.
>To the extent that there are beings—past & future, passing away & re-arising—all beings are owner of their actions, heir to their actions, born of their actions, related through their actions, and have their actions as their arbitrator. Whatever they do, for good or for evil, to that will they fall heir.’

When he/she often reflects on this, the path takes birth. He/she sticks with that path, develops it, cultivates it. As he/she sticks with that path, develops it, & cultivates it, the fetters are abandoned, the obsessions destroyed.” — AN 5:57

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>>24752137

May all beings be protected in all directions from greed, anger, aversion, hatred, jealousy, and fear.

May they be well, happy, and peaceful.
May no harm come to them.
May no difficulties come to them.
May no problems come to them.
May they always meet with success.

May they also have patience, courage, understanding, and determination
to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures in life.

May their minds be filled with the thought of loving-friendliness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity.
May they be generous.
May they be gentle.
May they be grateful.
May they be relaxed.
May they be happy and peaceful.
May they be healthy.
May their hearts become soft.
May their words be pleasing to others.

May all that they
>see
>hear
>smell
>taste
>touch
>think
help them to cultivate:
>loving-friendliness
>compassion
>appreciative joy
>equanimity
>generosity
>gentleness

May their behavior be friendly and their loving-friendliness be a source of peace and happiness.
May this behavior help their personality.
May they be free from fear, tension, anxiety, worry, and restlessness.

Wherever they go in the world, may they meet people with
>happiness
>friendliness
>peace

>>24752137
"Ānanda, if you go to the monk Girimānanda and tell him ten perceptions, it’s possible that when he hears the ten perceptions his disease may be allayed. Which ten? The perception of inconstancy, the perception of not-self, the perception of unattractiveness, the perception of drawbacks, the perception of abandoning, the perception of dispassion, the perception of cessation, the perception of distaste for every world, the perception of the undesirability of all fabrications, mindfulness of in-and-out breathing.

[1] “And what is the perception of inconstancy? There is the case where a monk — having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building — reflects thus: ‘Form is inconstant, feeling is inconstant, perception is inconstant, fabrications are inconstant, consciousness is inconstant.’ Thus he remains focused on inconstancy with regard to the five aggregates. This, Ānanda, is called the perception of inconstancy.

[2] “And what is the perception of not-self? There is the case where a monk — having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building — reflects thus: ‘The eye is not-self; forms are not-self. The ear is not-self; sounds are not-self. The nose is not-self; aromas are not-self. The tongue is not-self; flavors are not-self. The body is not-self; tactile sensations are not-self. The intellect is not-self; ideas are not-self.’ Thus he remains focused on not-selfness with regard to the six inner and outer sense media. This is called the perception of not-self.

[3] “And what is the perception of unattractiveness? There is the case where a monk ponders this very body — from the soles of the feet on up, from the crown of the head on down, surrounded by skin, filled with all sorts of unclean things — ‘There is in this body: hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin, muscle, tendons, bones, bone marrow, spleen, heart, liver, membranes, kidneys, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, gorge, feces, gall, phlegm, lymph, blood, sweat, fat, tears, oil, saliva, mucus, oil in the joints, urine.’ Thus he remains focused on unattractiveness with regard to this very body. This is called the perception of unattractiveness.

>>24765477
[4] “And what is the perception of drawbacks? There is the case where a monk — having gone to the wilderness, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty dwelling — reflects thus: ‘This body has many pains, many drawbacks. In this body many kinds of disease arise, such as seeing-diseases, hearing-diseases, nose-diseases, tongue-diseases, body-diseases, head-diseases, ear-diseases, mouth-diseases, teeth-diseases, cough, asthma, catarrh, fever, aging, stomachache, fainting, dysentery, grippe, cholera, leprosy, boils, ringworm, tuberculosis, epilepsy, skin-diseases, itch, scab, psoriasis, scabies, jaundice, diabetes, hemorrhoids, fistulas, ulcers, diseases arising from bile, from phlegm, from the wind-property, from combinations of bodily humors, from changes in the weather, from uneven care of the body, from attacks, from the result of kamma; cold, heat, hunger, thirst, defecation, urination.’ Thus he remains focused on drawbacks with regard to this body. This is called the perception of drawbacks.

[5] “And what is the perception of abandoning? There is the case where a monk does not tolerate an arisen thought of sensuality. He abandons it, destroys it, dispels it, and wipes it out of existence. He does not tolerate an arisen thought of ill-will. He abandons it, destroys it, dispels it, and wipes it out of existence. He does not tolerate an arisen thought of harmfulness. He abandons it, destroys it, dispels it, and wipes it out of existence. He does not tolerate arisen evil, unskillful mental qualities. He abandons them, destroys them, dispels them, and wipes them out of existence. This is called the perception of abandoning.

[6] “And what is the perception of dispassion? There is the case where a monk — having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building — reflects thus: ‘This is peace, this is exquisite, the pacification of all fabrications, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the ending of craving, dispassion, Unbinding.’ This is called the perception of dispassion.

[7] “And what is the perception of cessation? There is the case where a monk — having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building — reflects thus: ‘This is peace, this is exquisite — the pacification of all fabrications, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the ending of craving, cessation, Unbinding.’ This is called the perception of cessation.

[8] “And what is the perception of distaste for every world? There is the case where a monk abandoning any attachments, clingings, fixations of awareness, biases, or obsessions with regard to any world, refrains from them and does not get involved. This is called the perception of distaste for every world.

[9] “And what is the perception of the undesirability of all fabrications? There is the case where a monk feels horrified, humiliated, and disgusted with all fabrications. This is called the perception of the undesirability of all fabrications.

>>24765479
[10] “And what is mindfulness of in-and-out breathing?

There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore. Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.

[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, ‘I am breathing in long’; or breathing out long, he discerns, ‘I am breathing out long.’
[2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, ‘I am breathing in short’; or breathing out short, he discerns, ‘I am breathing out short.’
[3] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.’
[4] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.’

"Quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities, he enters & remains in the first jhāna: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. He permeates & pervades, suffuses & fills this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of seclusion. Just as if a dexterous bathman or bathman’s apprentice would pour bath powder into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it again & again with water, so that his ball of bath powder—saturated, moisture-laden, permeated within & without—would nevertheless not drip; even so, the monk permeates… this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of seclusion. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture & pleasure born of seclusion. This is a fruit of the contemplative life, visible here & now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime."

>>24765483

[5] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.’
[6] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.’
[7] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to mental fabrication.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to mental fabrication.’
[8] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in calming mental fabrication.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out calming mental fabrication.’

"Then, with the stilling of directed thoughts & evaluations, he enters & remains in the second jhāna: rapture & pleasure born of concentration, unification of awareness free from directed thought & evaluation—internal assurance. He permeates & pervades, suffuses & fills this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of concentration. Just like a lake with spring-water welling up from within, having no inflow from the east, west, north, or south, and with the skies supplying abundant showers time & again, so that the cool fount of water welling up from within the lake would permeate & pervade, suffuse and fill it with cool waters, there being no part of the lake unpervaded by the cool waters; even so, the monk permeates… this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of concentration. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture & pleasure born of concentration. This, too, is a fruit of the contemplative life, visible here & now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime."

>>24765485

[9] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to the mind.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to the mind.’
[10] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in gladdening the mind.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out gladdening the mind.’
[11] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in steadying the mind.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out steadying the mind.
[12] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in releasing the mind.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out releasing the mind.’

"And then, with the fading of rapture, he remains equanimous, mindful, & alert, and senses pleasure with the body. He enters & remains in the third jhāna, of which the noble ones declare, ‘Equanimous & mindful, he has a pleasant abiding.’ He permeates & pervades, suffuses & fills this very body with the pleasure divested of rapture. Just as in a lotus pond, some of the lotuses, born and growing in the water, stay immersed in the water and flourish without standing up out of the water, so that they are permeated & pervaded, suffused & filled with cool water from their roots to their tips, and nothing of those lotuses would be unpervaded with cool water; even so, the monk permeates… this very body with the pleasure divested of rapture. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded with pleasure divested of rapture. This, too, is a fruit of the contemplative life, visible here & now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime."

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>>24765487

[13] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in focusing on inconstancy.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out focusing on inconstancy.’
[14] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in focusing on dispassion [literally, fading].’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out focusing on dispassion.’
[15] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in focusing on cessation.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out focusing on cessation.’
[16] He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in focusing on relinquishment.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out focusing on relinquishment.’

"And then, with the abandoning of pleasure & pain—as with the earlier disappearance of elation & distress—he enters & remains in the fourth jhāna: purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain. He sits, permeating the body with a pure, bright awareness. Just as if a man were sitting covered from head to foot with a white cloth so that there would be no part of his body to which the white cloth did not extend; even so, the monk sits, permeating the body with a pure, bright awareness. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by pure, bright awareness. This, too, great king, is a fruit of the contemplative life, visible here & now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime.”"

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/WithEachAndEveryBreath/Contents.html

> dude like an impersonal absolute that renders this lived experience illusory
> except my realizing all this, that’s not illusory because it just is okay???
LMAO at Buddhists

>>24765495
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/KarmaQ&A/Section0004.html

1. What is kamma?
>intentional actions in thought, word, and deed
>the results of intentional actions—past or present—which are shaped by the quality of the intention behind those actions

2. How do actions determine results?
>Skillful intentional acts—those that would lead to no harm for yourself or anyone else—tend toward pleasant results.
>Unskillful intentional acts—those that would lead to harm for yourself or others, or both—tend toward painful results

Kamma is like a seed.
When you plant a bitter melon seed, it’ll tend to produce a bitter melon vine.
When you plant a grape seed, it’ll tend to produce a grape vine.
You can’t expect a grape seed to produce a bitter melon vine, or a bitter melon seed to produce a grape vine.

When you plant a “kamma seed,” it’ll tend to give pleasant results if it’s skillful, and painful results if it’s not.
Acts of generosity, over the long term, tend to lead to wealth.
Taking intoxicants tends to lead to mental derangement.
But how strong those results will be and how long they will take to ripen will depend on many factors in addition to the original actions:
the actions you’ve done before,
the actions you’ve done after,
and the state of your mind when the results are fully ripe.

How your mind acts around the ripening of old kamma seeds is the most important factor determining whether you suffer from those results.
If your present actions (new kamma) are unskillful as they engage with the results of old kamma, you can suffer even from the results of good past kamma.
If your present kamma is skillful, it can minimize the suffering that would come from bad past kamma.
If you treat the pleasure coming from past good kamma as an excuse for pride or selfishness, you’re going to suffer.
If you treat the pain coming from an unskillful action as an opportunity to comprehend pain so as to release yourself from its power, you’ll suffer less.

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>>24765515

>>24765515
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/TruthOfRebirth/Section0003.html

>skillful actions always lead in the direction of happiness and well-being; unskillful actions always lead in the direction of suffering and harm.
>it’s a safer wager to assume that actions bear results that can affect not only this lifetime but also lifetimes after this than it is to assume the opposite.
>it is a safer, more reasonable, and more honorable policy to assume the truth of these teachings than it would be to assume otherwise.
>action is an investment that, like all investments, incurs risks.


In MN 60, the Buddha pointed out that anyone who adheres to the annihilationist view would not be expected to avoid unskillful behavior,
whereas those who hold to the opposite—mundane right view—would be expected to avoid unskillful behavior.

Then he said of the first (annihilationist) group:

“With regard to this, an observant person considers thus: ‘If there is no next world, then—with the breakup of the body, after death—this venerable person has made himself safe. But if there is the next world, then this venerable person—with the breakup of the body, after death—will reappear in a plane of deprivation, a bad destination, a lower realm, hell. Even if we didn’t speak of the next world, and there weren’t the true statement of those venerable contemplatives & brahmans [who assert the existence of the next world], this venerable person is still criticized in the here-&-now by the observant as a person of bad habits & wrong view: one who holds to a doctrine of non-existence.’ If there really is a next world, then this venerable person has made a bad throw twice: in that he is criticized by the observant here-&-now, and in that—with the breakup of the body, after death—he will reappear in a plane of deprivation, a bad destination, a lower realm, hell. Thus this safe-bet teaching, when poorly grasped & poorly adopted by him, covers (only) one side, and leaves behind the possibility of the skillful.”

As for the second group—those who hold to mundane right view and act on it—he said this:

“With regard to this, an observant person considers thus: ‘If there is the next world, then this venerable person—with the breakup of the body, after death—will reappear in a good destination, a heavenly world. Even if we didn’t speak of the next world, and there weren’t the true statement of those venerable contemplatives & brahmans, this venerable person is still praised in the here-&-now by the observant as a person of good habits & right view: one who holds to a doctrine of existence.’ If there really is a next world, then this venerable person has made a good throw twice, in that he is praised by the observant here-&-now; and in that—with the breakup of the body, after death—he will reappear in a good destination, a heavenly world. Thus this safe-bet teaching, when well grasped & adopted by him, covers both sides, and leaves behind the possibility of the unskillful.” — MN 60

>>24765518
The Buddha was questioned by a traveler about what happens after death.

In response, the Buddha asked a series of questions. First, he asked:
>If there were indeed a future life, how would you live?

The traveler replied:
>If there were indeed future lives, I would want to be mindful so as to sow seeds of future wisdom. And I would want to live with generosity and compassion, because they bring happiness now and sow seeds of abundance in the future.

the Buddha responded, and continued:
>And if there were no future lives, how would you live?

After pondering this, the traveler replied similarly:
>If this were my only life, I would still want to live mindfully, so as not to miss anything. And I would want to live with generosity and compassion, because they bring happiness here and now, and because I cannot take anything with me at the moment of death anyway.

By prompting identical answers to these two questions, the Buddha demonstrated that living wisely does not depend on faith in an existence after death.

>>24752137
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/RecognizingTheDhamma/Contents.html

“These qualities lead to DISPASSION, not to passion;
to being UNFETTERED, not to being fettered;
to SHEDDING, not to accumulating;
to MODESTY, not to self-aggrandizement;
to CONTENTMENT, not to discontent;
to SECLUSION, not to entanglement;
to aroused PERSISTENCE, not to laziness;
to being UNBURDENSOME, not to being burdensome’:
You may categorically hold, ‘This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher’s instruction.’”
—AN 8:53

All of these values run counter to the common values of domestic society.

>The values of DISPASSION and being UNFETTERED run counter to the pursuit of sensuality and to the sense of “I,” “mine,” “we,” and “ours” that underlie family life.
>The value of SHEDDING runs counter to the domestic desire to accumulate as a protection against future lack; because this value includes the shedding of pride, it also runs counter to the desire for prominence in social affairs.
>The value of CONTENTMENT runs counter to the domestic concern with accumulating wealth and stockpiling for the future.
>The value of MODESTY, counter to the desire for fame and recognition.
>The value of SECLUSION, counter to the domestic desire to be surrounded by loved ones.
>The value of being UNBURDENSOME, on its face, coincides with the domestic value of frugality, but on a deeper level–in light of the fact that the act of creating a family places extra burdens on the environment to feed and support more people–it counsels celibacy as the ideal way to be unburdensome. Thus it runs directly counter to the domestic idea that the creation of a family is a gift to the world.
>For PERSISTENCE, both the Dhamma and domestic society value persistence in the pursuit of one’s aims, but they differ widely in their understanding of what those aims should be.