When did you realize that He was right about everything?
>>25409075When I kept returning back to him after my forays into atheistic philosophy, traditional Christianity, animistic spirituality and whatever else. And everytime I came back and saw his image, it was almost like he was speaking to me:>Was it worth it, anon?>No, it wasn't, I shouldn't have strayed from the path>Be at peace, anon. Now you know, now you can guide yourself better. Do not be hard on yourself.Buddhism addresses suffering at an intimate level, and through meditation (whether sat, mantra, or walking) it makes one confront the causes of suffering in one's mind and focus on it. Atheistic "mindfulness" for vibes, Catholic and Orthodox "meditation"/"hesychasm"/"contemplation" that don't look into the mind itself, and animistic woo-woo did not make the root cause of suffering clear and the path certain like Buddhism did.
few years ago. came to the conclusions myself through intense thinking and reasoning and logic. then i thought "okay i can't possibly be the first to have realized this," and then realized when i actually started looking into and reading the suttas that one of the oldest and biggest religions in the world actually figured it all out like 3,000 years ago and put it into understandable and direct practices and in fact basically every religion since then has been a johnny come lately esque recreation of its glory>>25409114based
>>25409075I only have superficial knowledge about theravada, but I can't successfully convince myself to believe in rebirth. Like that kamma or some shit randomly gets passed down. What books of metaphysics have you guys read on it for it to make sense? Or were just the original texts enough?
>>25409075Meditation, and just seeing nothing compares to what he teaches.
>>25409200Isn't rebirth also considered suffering
>>25409200The Buddhist concept of no-soul requires a lot of meditation on it to fully grasp. Ultimately, it means there is nothing unique tying you (or the mental process that is "you") to this body, and something else of sufficient capability and similarity to your brain like a sci-fi consciousness computer/machine, or another living organism that randomly through biological variation happens to have said capability being born amidst the trillions of beings in the universe, will have your consciousness and mental aggregates arise again naturally. Since the new consciousness and aggregates have to be sufficiently similar to your current ones in order to be a continuation of "your" mental process, it is determined by the kind of mind you cultivate in this life (kamma), and there is the possibility and path to cultivate a mind that stops arising entirely (enlightenment/nibbana). It's hard to explain this as no-soul is quite difficult to grasp even for East Asian cradle Buddhist lay folk, but think about it. It took me several months of meditation and reading, and a combination of western existentialism, some aspects of Marxist dialectical materialism (which bear some resemblances to no-soul and impermanence doctrines of Buddhism) and Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist theory that ultimately made me realize that by treating my consciousness as unique to this brain, I am still treating it as if there is no naturalistic or artificial process that can re-create my consciousness and aggregates. Since the science of the mind is too young to speak definitively on such a possibility, I am free to believe in the affirmative or negative, and I chose the affirmative following the Buddha's Wager.
Why are /lit/ Buddhists so much less annoying than the Abrahamics? Look at this thread. This is a good thread, or was until I posted.
>>25409430Abrahamic religions tend to be far less syncretic than Buddhism. Buddhism has room for a lot of different religions co-existing with it in its cosmology. Abrahamic religions have little room for it.
>>25409430People say this about christianity, but Buddhism really is a slave religion. They don't really care about anything, so of course they're not gonna care that you don't care. This makes them a lot less annoying to everyone else who also doesn't care. Smoke weed every day.
>>25409075I think Pure Land Buddhism is essentially right that people can't save themselves in our fallen age, but at that point you might as well start believing in God.
>>25409430Two abrahamics seeking to convert are Christianity and Islam, and they to save your soul. It comes out of good place, but leads to bad things. They also believe anything not directed towards their god leads to hell, so they develop some annoying qualities.>>25409491Pure land is just type of religion fit for masses. All religions if getting large amount of believers will become type where minimal participation/devotion and faith saves you. Its not without its virtues though.
>>25409514Pure Land teachings aren't directed exclusively at laypeople though
>>25409517Iirc its still the most popular branch of buddhism among the laymen
>>25409430buddhists don't care if you believe them or not
>>25409075every what?
what to do if you want to become a monk but western buddhists are cringe and eastern ones are too culturally different
>>25409729Think about how "culturally different" Christianity is for them, and they still convert and attempt to practice the religion in at least a semi-accurate manner. Meanwhile, western buddhists are either secular bs or "too different from my culture".
>>25409200There is no such thing as rebirth in actual buddhism. It's all superstition invented hundreds of years after buddha that's meant to tame the masses. Same thing as heaven and hell and karma.
>>25409075why is he using giant anal beads? pretty gay.
>>25409075Around 5 years ago.
>>25409075So is Nirvana supposed to be simply that the mental aggregates that make up "you" cease to be reincarnated or some kind of transcendence?
>>25409075Sorry, wrong pic. Here’s the correct one.
>>25410355None, both of those options presupouse a substance
>>25409430Give it time.
>>25409423>Since the new consciousness and aggregates have to be sufficiently similar to your current ones in order to be a continuation of "your" mental process, it is determined by the kind of mind you cultivate in this life (kamma)This is the first explanation that actually sounds somewhat plausible, but do most Buddhists really think this?
>>25409200Atnthe end of the day, since there's no soul doing the rebirth, what rebirth entails in a buddhist framework is that your mind Is not a tabula rasa, you have some ontological baggage, pretty similar yo the Heideggerian notion of "throwness"(geworfenheit) or the Greek ananke, you can't fully choose who you are oenhow you think, you can only work with what you have,you aré under a particular contexto that's over your control, that's phenomenologically what rebirth entails, it's not really metaphysical concept
>>25410508I have seen arguments by both Thich Nhat Hanh (Theravada/Zen) and Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Theravada) similar to this, though both of them where somewhat educated in western philosophy and could articulate their ideas better than most teachers who'd just handwave it on top of faith.For lay Buddhists in traditionally Buddhist countries? Don't expect them to be as knowledgeable, for much like western lay Christians regularly fucking up their definition of the Trinity, Asian lay Buddhists often forget there is no soul and presuppose eternalism instead of impermanence, leading to literal Hindu-esque reincarnation.
>>25409075Stoicism for slant-eyes
>>25409430Because you read three posts with multiple paragraphs each, assumed they were high quality, extrapolated that onto entire categories, then formed a notion that the opposite holds for alternate categories, and then packed it all into a shitty loaded question post begging for people to validate your vibes-based ideology you have shallow understanding of.
>>25410041>source: my ass
>>25409200um inertia
>>25409075i pee on cuddha
>>25409075The one thing that bothers me about buddhism the most is the eventual stagnation that's created by enlightenment. Think about it: If you're already empty of any desire, why change anything, why do anything at all? It doesn't matter if you die in agony or live for centuries, it doesn't matter if world peace is reached or if we nuke ourselves to eternal darkness. That seems completely antithetical to everything about humanity and humans as a whole. The one thing we all have in common with every human that ever lived is that we're always going forwards in some way, be it mathematically, scientifically or philosophically. We went from living in huts to creating computers in what was essentially a millisecond for the universe. Buddhism inherently cuts any reason for us to go forward in any way, after all, why would we? Why bother trying to cure new illnesses or improve our lives in any way? That just feels so incredibly wrong in an instinctual level.Am I missing something?
>>25409075Buddhism is the hero/ warriors religion
>>25409430Speaking from a Christian perspective, because we tell you you're a sinner in need of a Saviour. No one likes to hear that they're the bad guy. What some doctrines of Buddhism offer, i.e. achieving enlightenment by your own efforts, is far more attractive and pleasing to sinful human flesh. Ultimately, it comes down to what the truth is, not what is more or less annoying.
>>25412869That is why Mahayana Buddhism became so popular. Boddhicitta and becoming a boddhisatva reapond to all your concerns.
>>25409075Buddhism inherently teaches you to be happy with nothing If you can do this, you win
>>25409075He was precisely half right about everything, because Buddhism is heavily biased towards the perspective of the moment, which along with the perspective of the duration are the two fundamental perspectives of change and time. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy calls this the modes of "being" and "doing."The perspective of the duration in human experience is narrative in nature: a story of change over time. The mode of narrative is the mode of desire because desire is future-driven and thus temporally situated ("how do I get or do this?")Buddhism's warnings of desire interpreted as warnings of desire as a thing-in-itself divorced from the appreciation of the present and past are valid and insightful. So are its warnings of what happens when thinking and narrative are divorced from sense-experience. Where Buddhism goes wrong is when it seeks to discard desire and thought altogether, and this originates metaphysically from the false assumption that the present moment is the ground of reality.Thankfully we have an analytical solution. The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus demonstrates that integration and differentiation, cumulative and instantaneous change are inverses - mutually defined by each other, finding dialectical fulfillment in each other.Exploration of the metaphysical implications of the fundamental theorem of calculus, and calculus as a style of thought has a storied history including of course Liebniez, as well as Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze and others. Whitehead clearly describes the FTC as a metaphysical principle on page 338 of Process and Reality:>In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence. Those who would disjoin the two elements can find no interpretation of patent factsHere are the first 15 pages of Elizabeth Kraus' "The Metaphysics of Experience" which is an outstanding companion to Process and Reality: https://imgur.com/a/metaphysics-of-experience-by-elizabeth-kraus-ZtLDYJT
>>25412941On page 3 she describes Whitehead's _romantic_ dynamic between being and becoming:>"Everything that in any sense exists has two sides: namely, its individual self and its significance in the universe" (MT 151). These two poles cannot be torn apart. Each finds its fulfillment in the other via their dialectical relation. Thus, becoming is for the purpose of being (signification in the universe) and being is for the purpose of novel becoming (the emergent individual self.)>...Two inseparable notions therefore constitute the foundational insight of Whitehead's process philosophy: the permanence of value achieved and the ongoingness of value achievement."Finding fulfillment in each other" "for the purpose of each other." This is a romantic dialectic that includes literal human romance but is applicable to other things as an analogous relational pattern.Now what happens if we imagine this as a literal romance between two anthropomorphic personifications of integration and differentiation?Behold The Gods of Calculus:https://claude.ai/share/29572eda-b42a-4eb6-8ee8-fcccd0fea08fhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUosSQZSw5c
>>25412869All of what you said is correct though. Nothing matters but do what you want. You still have to survive and you can either rot or just chill. Touch grass.
>>25412946This is a perfect example of a perspective that makes the individual self the ultimate. Heavily differentialy coded as the cool kids say.
>>25412953>We will honor our biological ancestors stretching back along the many-branched bush of evolution to the origins of life, and we will hope to be honored by future life-forms beyond our imagining when we understand ourselves as indebted to them for their achievements and knowing we will pay that debt by how our actions shape the course of future evolution. We honor the universe and all the cosmoses that long ago and now and long after give it particular expression by understanding that we are part of its unbounded process. Peace is the sense of ourselves as active participants in this Ultimate Community.Based. This Lakotan prayer is the same message but more illustrative:All my relations. I honour you in this circle of life with me today. I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge you in this prayer…To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you.To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundations of life experience, I thank you.To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness, I thank you.To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionship in this walk of life, I thank you.To the human nation that shares my path as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you.To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages. I thank you.To the Four Winds of Change and Growth, I thank you.You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.Thank you for this Life.
>>25412965That is of course a heavily integrally-coded view. This picture illustrates a differential coded view of meaning and value, an ode to the impermanent finite unique entity.
>>25412893elaborate>inb4 le warrior of the mind
>>25412980Mind wars are real, in a sense physical wars are just one route of their manifestation, but not the only one.The internet has allowed the acceleration of mind wars to a global scale. The attention economy is a massive arms race to manipulate the masses for the purpose of power and profit.The primary incentive is to increase the effectiveness of mass psycho-memetic manipulation. What it is heading towards, what many of the top players are consciously seeking is the ultimate in informational mind control. The power to command and rewrite the minds of the world.Buddhism won't save you from this, lol. Armies of trained, disciplined specialists vs. your sanity. It's probably already gone.Welcome to the memetic apocalypse where what is to be revealed are what minds are able to resist the most powerful attempts at manipulation, and what minds get lost in themselves.
>>25412894Yet, some Buddhist schools do not require any sort of faith and you have verify each teaching. Which is the exact opposite of any Abrahamic teaching. I think that is far more attractive especially if you lack in faith.
>>25412995This is the reason for the oligarch AI hysteria: they see it just just a tool to place mental labor but to manipulate it. Everyone wants to be the one to win and be in control of the God-machine because if someone else does they lose along with everyone else.This is all an example of desire as a thing-in-itself manifesting in an extreme as the desire for unlimited power. The modern world was set up by men infected by such an unhinged desire to benefit them, and through a Darwinian process only the most coldly effective powermongers prevailed. The ecosystem has grown to a point where it is cannibalizing itself, driving the minds of the world into greater and greater insanity, devouring the substrate of competence that is required for a society to exist.It is a negative-sum death-spiral and the root cause is the rule of greed.
>>25413008Gnosticism has become popular because this accelerating global mind war is increasingly impossible to not feel as an overwhelming sense of pervasive conflict and hostility. Under such conditions it's more easy to project this as a condition of reality, that the universe itself is a hostile place created by a hostile entity trying to play God and failing. The reality of those hostile entities is entire human: power mongers who seek to hoard influence and privilege at the expense of others so they can more fully do whatever they want accountable only to themselves.The ultimate status such mindsets desire is to be too big to jail: beyond legal accountability because they are the absolute authority. To be a despot.This is why Epstein's rot was able to take root so deeply in power: what he facilitated was the experience of radical freedom from accountability: radical lawlessness. To minds that desire only to be a power onto themselves, this is like crack cocaine.
>>25412997There are secular and “scientific Buddhist” schools that rely on the Kalama Sutta as the center of their doctrine, but these are a relatively new development from the last century when scientific psychology was still finding its ground. Verification itself can be problematic. Scientific verification requires demonstrable replicability, for instance, which is not something afforded by Buddhist meditation. You may be able to gain the same insights through the path as mentioned in the suttas, but this is personal, subjective verification and not demonstrable in an objective manner. The only sense in which it is demonstrable is by the wisdom and virtue that arise as byproducts of the path, but wisdom and virtue alone are not unique to Buddhism, and again there are no objective criteria to identify them scientifically. This means you don’t have a good scientific verification criteria for testing the teachings, and must fall back to faith at some point or the other. Having faith is fine in Buddhism, as long as it is complemented by the personal, subjective verification criteria.Either this, or you simply use secular Buddhism like a purely secular philosophy in a completely naturalistic framework, akin to internet Stoicism today, to compliment secular mindfulness practice and related psychotherapy. Mindfulness has been verified scientifically to promote well-being among other positive effects, provided you aren’t performing corpse meditation or similar existential forms of meditation.
>>25409423>It took me several months of meditation and reading, and a combination of western existentialism, some aspects of Marxist dialectical materialism (which bear some resemblances to no- soul and impermanence doctrines of Buddhism)That's certainly interesting. Wouldn't there be a clash of logic here, or at least the tension of Marxism frowning upon Buddhism as a concept?>>25410508I can't speak for Buddhists but scientifically speaking Buddhism is the LEAST debooonked by science out of most religions, for now at least
>>25412997>Yet, some Buddhist schools do not require any sort of faith and you have verify each teaching. Which is the exact opposite of any Abrahamic teaching.Faith does not consist in believing something wonderful but consists in knowing one's position.
>>25409430Buddhists are annoying, but in a different way to Abrahamics. Abrahamics don't know anything but adamantly demand you convert to their religion, while Buddhists pretend to know everything and mock everyone through patronizing them until they convert to Buddhism.The only true non-ego driven religions are European paganism, because they rely on finding your own worth through your own merit, not following in the footsteps of humans pretending to be gods.
>>25413623Well that was disappointing. It seemed like you were going to say something interesting only to reveal you're a bigger retard than reddit athiests.
>>25413634I don't care what a retarded faggot like you thinks. You're worthless to me.
>>25413635He has laid the ego to rest.
>>25413640Ego relies upon the submission to others, which I do not care about, ergo, exemplifying you're a retarded faggot who doesn't understand what ego is, justifying my comment. You are not worthless after all.
>>25413635I got some nice loosh from that pathetic attempt to hide seething.
>>25413640>>25413657So butt-blasted he had to samefag. Sad. But predictable.
>>25413664
>>25409075*blocks your path*
>>25409423No-soul can be easily understood logically. We define soul as the subject, and that's defined as that which is acting, and object as that which is acted upon. If we follow these definitions faithfully, and abide by the rules of logic which states that one thing cannot be another at the same time, place, or respect, then we come to find that there's absolutely nothing that we can point to in experience which could be called a subject. The one pointing, looking, or experiencing completely evades objectification, all you'll find is what's being pointed at, what's being looked at, and what's being experienced. It's like trying to look at your own eye, it is simply impossible, unless you're looking at a reflection or image of it. So while you can look at a reflection or image of the "source", the "source" cannot be located, because it's that which gives rise to location.
>>25411807This is why westerners will never understand Buddhism.
>>25414065Its not really blocking, if you stand behind buddha, copying his ideas.
>>25409075who?
>>25410445What do you mean? What is Nirvana then?
>>25414110what if my acting is acting really upon my self as object?
>>25414306it is if i need a tiger rug and smores
>>25414311If something is being acted upon it's not-self by definition. That's how the neti neti method works, start with what you understand as subject and object, then try to find anything that is the subject, follow the logic of the subject/object duality to it's logical conclusion. Can you observe the body? Not me. Can you observe feelings? Not me. Can you observe the 5 sense doors? Not me. Can you observe thoughts? Not me. can you observe the sense of an observer? If you can observe it, not even the that is you either. Necessarily, anything that can be found, by nature of it being findable, of having location, of arising/passing away, cannot be you.
>>25414338thats very dualist of you.
>>25414346Concepts are inherently dualistic, the point is using these concepts as a tool. You're starting with what your conventional understanding of subject/object is and logically taking it to it's conclusion. If the subject, me, is that which acting, and the object, not me, is that which is acted upon, is it possible to find anything which is you? Are the qualities of "I" something exclusive, or does it exist in all the senses?
>>25414365concepts arent inherentl;y anythingwtf bro?
>>25409114based
>>25409430the ultimate religion is something like Shintoism where the priests can marry and make art.
>This is a good thread, or was until I posted.Prophetic.
I was obsessed with Buddhism for like a year but ultimately I don’t care about ending my own suffering. I simply don’t feel any need to end suffering. I know that meditation can make my mind more stable but I don’t feel like doing it. Also, when I have meditated I’m rather disturbed by the state it creates. When you become absorbed in your breath you may not feel bad but you kind of become both mindless and aware at the same time where you’re conscious but not having any thoughts or being able to be invested in anything else. It disturbs me to look back on and I don’t desire to recreate that state. I feel if I did I would just enter a static state where I never learn or appreciate anything ever again.
>>25415840did you do it right?
>>25415926Usually I just did breath awareness. I also chanted the light mantra and the heart sutra mantra a lot. One time I followed the instructions in satipatthana sutta. I can’t say I did any of it consistently or even that much but none of my experiences made me want to continue
>>25415840>>25415929i had similiar thoughts when i first started.if you choose to pick it up again; preservere. id recommend just focusing on the breath, keep it simple. just grind it everyday even if you can only manage a short time. consistency is absolutely key.dont expect anything and be patient. i promise you the results will come.my encouragement to you and any lurkers.
>>25409075wrong pic
