>desire is the root of sufferingOkay, I'm listening>detaching from desires and ego will cease sufferingOkay, sounds good>by the way, there is also no self, you are just a collection of five aggregate senses. so like this is you but not really "you">also when you die they will just get recollected into something else if you didnt reach nirvana>also if you were really bad you might get sent to a hell realm where some spirit will torture the fuck out of you for a million years until you pay off your karmaWait what? Can you explain any of this?>dude you just asked one of the imponderable questions. don't worry about itHow am I supposed to believe this as the actual explanation for our existence?
from day one on these sorts of paths, you are either a student or a teacher, theres no in between. either that or you refuse the alternative and leave that school behind entirely.
>>24957375>by the way, there is also no self, you are just a collection of five aggregate senses. so like this is you but not really "you"This is actually proven by neuroscience btw>also when you die they will just get recollected into something else if you didnt reach nirvana>>also if you were really bad you might get sent to a hell realm where some spirit will torture the fuck out of you for a million years until you pay off your karmaAll of this is perennial doctrine (cf. Plato and Pythagoras). You got filtered by Buddhism like the hylic you are.
>by the way, there is also no self, you are just a collection of five aggregate senses. so like this is you but not really "you"read Schopenhauerif you're a pseud or Alan Watts if you want a clear explanation
>>24957375>>desire is the root of sufferingTrue>>detaching from desires and ego will cease sufferingTrue>>by the way, there is also no self, you are just a collection of five aggregate senses. so like this is you but not really "you"Basically true >>also when you die they will just get recollected into something else if you didnt reach nirvanaProbably not true>>also if you were really bad you might get sent to a hell realm where some spirit will torture the fuck out of you for a million years until you pay off your karmavery unlikely to be trueOverall though it's pretty crazy how close the Buddha got to the correct understanding of existence and Nature. He's far more correct, substantially beyond the Abrahamic tradition and metaphysics.
>>24957375>there is also no selfthere is no self in any of the five aggregates>when you die they will just get recollected into something elseyes, because they are not self, they are not yours, “you” they are not>if you were really bad you might get sent to a hell realm where some spirit will torture the fuck out of you for a million years until you pay off your karmamahayana upaya buddha tells noble lies sometimes as a skilful means of teaching the dhamma
>>24957389Okay, please summarize this perennial doctrine in Buddhist metaphysics. If you are such a pneumatic then I suppose it would be very easy for you to explain what you believe to someone who asks.
>>24957392Abrahamic metaphysics is just Platonic metaphysics applied to religious beliefs
>>24957389>This is actually proven by neuroscience btwneuroscience cannot disprove the existence of something that is non-physical, so it cannot prove the Buddhist denial of the immortal and non-physical Atma affirmed by its Indian opponents.
>>24957375no-self just means that there's no ego-self that is self-grounding and self-subsistent. the thomists basically arrived at the same conclusion (ie. all created things are participations of being, and not being-itself).
>>24957375>also when you die they will just get recollected into something else if you didnt reach nirvana>also if you were really bad you might get sent to a hell realm where some spirit will torture the fuck out of you for a million years until you pay off your karma>>>Wait what? Can you explain any of this?Buddhist ethics is similar to Utilitarianism in the west during the 1700s ie John Mill. Every person born in this realm is believed to be responsible for both good and evil and to avoid hell all you have to do is try to do more good works to outdo your evil works. What constitutes morality is also different- hunting animals for instance is considered an unforgivable sin. Pls read this allegorical play for basic overviewhttps://kadampa-center.org/sites/default/files/The%20Tibetan%20Book%20of%20the%20Dead%20First%20Complete%20Translation%20(Penguin%20Classics%20Deluxe%20Edition).pdf#page304
>>24957389>neuroscientist studies brain scan>finds no evidence of an ego complex>concludes ego complex doesn't exist
>>24957375Ignore that navel-gazing faggot. Desire is literally the root of all pleasure.
To go back to that Polybus quote where he dunks on Ionians and monists- Buddhism in essence may as well be monist. It posits a monist Being metaphysical structure - (In Dalai Lana’s words “we are all same soul and if I hurt others I also hurt myself”) However, it also posits this one Being as being illusory so it is sort of Monist and atheist at once with its main takeaway being everything as one unity in nothingness. >>>How am I supposed to believe this as the actual explanation for our existence?I dislike the backwards aspects of Buddhism like rituals and the deities but the overall monist-atheist metaphysics seems reasonable enough to me or as reasonable as anything.
>>24957687Monism is the only coherent metaphysics/ontology as far as I can tell.
>>24957375>by the way, there is also no self, you are just a collection of five aggregate senses. so like this is you but not really "you">also when you die they will just get recollected into something else if you didnt reach nirvana>also if you were really bad you might get sent to a hell realm where some spirit will torture the fuck out of you for a million years until you pay off your karma>How am I supposed to believe this as the actual explanation for our existence?Desire is better translated as attachment.Also, get over yourself.
Legend has it that once every ten thousand years there arises an anon who is capable of setting the online social media counterpart of the wheel of the dharma in motion, who has read enough about Buddhism to recognize the disagreements between different sects as well as the disagreements over how the various Buddhist texts should be translated, who can explain each of the resulting positions accurately, and who is charismatic enough to make this knowledge part of the western internet's common knowledge. I fear that this anon has not yet arisen.
>>24957591I'm not even a physicalist myself, but the notion of self is riddled with conceptual problems and the idea of the unity of consciousness has been deboonked by science.
>>24957418>buddha tells noble lies sometimes as a skilful means of teaching the dhammaThis. Buddhism has always contained "two truths" one for the lay person and one for the seekers/ascetics. "Right View" is defined differently for each category "Right View with Effluents" and "Right View without Effluents."If you are a beginner to Buddhism, you will be confused, but if you study it enough you will come to the realization that the Buddha certainly did not believe in hell, heaven or reincarnation. The core of Buddhism is Anatta, which is not expected to be understood by everybody (especially in his era), but this is almost the entirety of "Enlightenment." It's when the Five Bikkhu hear the Anattalakhana Sutta that they immediately become arahants (Enlightened), which they have reached through "discernment."If you read Gombrich, you'll see that the Buddha split his monks into two different groups: those who achieve Enlightenment through discernment and those who had to do it through meditation, because they did not have the acumen or the type of personality needed to understand his teachings purely on a rational basis. Rather than dismissing them as idiots, they were told to meditate.
>>24957914>The Buddha habitually lied by teaching rebirth, breaking one of the core precepts of the morality he taught.This is some serious cope for reconciling a misunderstanding the not-self teaching.https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN9_7.html>It is impossible for a monk whose effluents are ended to tell a conscious lie.
>>24957945Also Buddhism without rebirth is largely incoherent, and it makes suttas like picrel really, really dishonest. If there's no rebirth, a person could probably reduce their suffering in this life in many more (short-term) effective ways than going to the trouble of devoting their life to the effort to become enlightened.
>>24957945There are many places in the suttas where the Buddha admits to doing just that, speaking in "season," telling the right thing to the right audience, only telling what makes sense to tell. But of course you can find places in the sutta that say things like you cited. In other words it's a contradictory text, which is inevitable when there are "two truths". Also, it's 80,000 suttas written by hundreds if not thousands of monks over hundreds of years, so consistency is not something that anybody expects.
Mahayana is the least nonsensical Buddhist sect because it doesn't have anatta. I would never follow a jeet religion but if I had to I would pick that one.
>>24957953Telling the right thing at the right time is very different from outright deceiving people, and the five precepts are central enough to Buddhism that if something very close to them doesn't go back to the historical Buddha, then it might be more accurate to say there is no historical Buddha whose teachings can be discerned, just a jumble of texts featuring a Buddha character.
>>24957914The two truths isn’t about a story told to layman to make them behave. The two truths is the absolute (the thing prior to the world and recognized in your experience at stream entry) and the relative (world). You have a wordcel understanding of Buddhism and should go meditate to actually experience it. The experience is the same that’s found in Neoplatonism and mystic Christianity and the upanishads and a few others, it’s the basis of all true religion
>>24957963Where does the Buddha or Buddhism deceive people? It tells the right truth to the right people at the right time. This is a basic principle of skillful means. Do you believe that the Buddha and Buddhists in general do not tell lies like everybody else in order to maintain social harmony? This is why it's called "Right Speech." That means you have to choose your words and not tell truths that are only going to cause conflict. You can call them white lies, but this is just a basic part of living within a society. There is a sutta that describes exactly what is meant by "lies" when these are described as bad, and it's always about lying for self benefit. That's when lying is wrong. But lying to prevent somebody from being hurt or to prevent conflict, that is "Right Speech."
>>24957967I recommend to all of you: How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings (Richard F. Gombrich). But I will share with you some of my highlights. In particular, you want to pay attention to Chapt 4.>Chapt IV: Retracing an Ancient Debate: How Insight Worsted Concentration in the Pali Canon>Enlightenment can be attained without meditation, by a process of intellectual analysis (technically known as panna, insight) alone.>Among the seven types is:>ubhato-bhaga-vimutto – released on the both sides>panna-vimutto – released by insight>we are dealing with a hierarchy, in which the ‘follower through faith’ ranks last.>There are altogether six such paragraphs with identical beginnings about the clear teaching, so one can deduce that there are six graded ranks of followers. In second place, after the arahants, come the non-returners; third the once-returners; fourth the stream-enterers. This is absolutely standard, and so are the descriptions of those grades. Sixth and last come “those who only have faith in me and affection for me: they are all bound for heaven’ (yesam mayi saddha-mattam pema-mattam sabbe te sagga-parayana.).>In the previous short text (sutta 11) the five faculties are explained hierarchically, with faith at the bottom and insight ranking top.>We recall that despite the Buddha’s statement in AN I,118-120, the compiler of this list will not allow that faith or concentration can be the faculties with which to gain nirvana; for him the only faculty which can do that is insight.>The competition between meditation and insight as the effective method by which to achieve nirvana is the topic of a justly famous article by Louis de La Vallée Poussin: ‘Musila et Narada: Le Chemin de Nirvana’ (de La Vallée Poussin, 1936-7).>At MN I,437, Ananda asks the Buddha why some monks are ceto-vimuttino and some panna-vimuttino. The Buddha does not reply, as in effect he did to the three monks at AN I, 118-120, that there is no answer to this question. On the contrary, he says, with extreme brevity, that it is due to disparity in their faculties (ettha kho tesdham Ananda indriya-vemattatam vadami).>This sutta adheres to the third interpretation of the two paths to Enlightenment — that there are two valid methods — and in this respect is less extreme than the Kitagiri Sutta and our list. But it does spell out that one does not have to be a meditator to achieve Enlightenment.>This fourth view, the most extreme, may be a polemical response to the third one. It goes back to the original hierarchisation of med- itation and understanding, but asserts that the latter is so superior to the former that it may be used alone, whereas meditation on its own can never achieve Enlightenment.
>>24957945You do not want to be like Sāti the Fisherman’s Son. Look at how the Buddha scolds him:>“And to whom, worthless man, do you understand me to have taught the Dhamma like that? Haven’t I, in many ways, said of dependently co-arisen consciousness, ‘Apart from a requisite condition, there is no coming-into-play of consciousness’?2 But you, through your own poor grasp, not only slander us but also dig yourself up (by the root) and produce much demerit for yourself. That will lead to your long-term harm & suffering.”>Then the Blessed One, seeing that the monk Sāti, the Fisherman’s Son, was sitting silent, abashed, his shoulders drooping, his head down, brooding, at a loss for words, said to him, “Worthless man, you will be recognized for your own evil viewpoint. I will cross-question the monks on this matter.”>“Now, monks, knowing thus and seeing thus, would you run after the past, thinking, ‘Were we in the past? Were we not in the past? What were we in the past? How were we in the past? Having been what, what were we in the past’?”>“No, lord.”>“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you run after the future, thinking, ‘Shall we be in the future? Shall we not be in the future? What shall we be in the future? How shall we be in the future? Having been what, what shall we be in the future’?”>“No, lord.”>“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you be inwardly perplexed about the immediate present, thinking, ‘Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound’?”>“No, lord.”But even the Buddha was not able to teach Sati, so this shows how it's impossible to teach certain people Anatta--they simply cannot grasp it, which is why you have to have alternate paths for them.
>>24958135>Do you believe that the Buddha and Buddhists in general do not tell lies like everybody else in order to maintain social harmony?They're not supposed to.https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/ChantingGuide/Section0064.html>I undertake the training rule to refrain from telling lies.
>>24958143doesn't contradict what i said, in fact it's completely irrelevant
>>24958135>There is a sutta that describes exactly what is meant by "lies">But lying to prevent somebody from being hurt or to prevent conflict, that is "Right Speech."I'd like to see this sutta because from what I've read the precept to refrain from lies is taken very straightforwardly and absolutely. Maybe there's some Mahayana sutta to the effect, but as far as I know the major Mahayana suttas are regarded as have been written long after any historical Buddha.
