/lit/ - Literature

>>22348180
Reveres enlightened master(s)*

>>22072520
It’s okay I have been there and still struggle occasionally with those feelings but you can improve and mature. It’s all about growing up and maturing as a person.

>>22072564

Very unlikely that there is nothing for you my young friend. You probably just need to gain some years and perspective as difficult as that is to hear. Many young men like us are alienated and uprooted from the normal life path previous generations took for granted. It’s possible you were destined for a life of contemplation perhaps to join a monastery or something of the sort but I would not think so. I don’t know what’s troubling you but I would encourage you to remember we suffer much more in our mind than we do in reality. It’s very easy especially these days to wander around in circles in a painful mental wilderness we cultivated.

>>22072570

These are some of the books that personally helped me the most and helped shock myself out of my depression and inaction. There are many others but I found these to help me the most with this issue at the time. It challenged me to really look at how I viewed myself and my place in the world. It convicted me of many of my bad thought patterns it was painful but necessary growth. I don’t believe I am wise or a skilled enough writer to do Kazantzakis justice except to say that Zorba the Greek has a vital medicine for many a bookworm boy.

>>20551790
Buddhism is just a very refined form of Hedonism and is mainly supposed to be practiced, not studied.

I used to be a hardcore porn addict. Edging for hours, until my dick bled, then continuing by stimulating my prostate. Often high or drunk.

Even just the first Jhana is so much more pleasurable it’s unreal. It’s mind-numbing intense pleasure that then opens up into a kind of tranquility/smooth feeling that rivals even the most comfortable of MDMA highs.
Afterwards you’re not even exhausted, you actually feel better than before.
It also opens up the way for getting rid of a lot of stress and brings relaxation into daily life. It transforms your views in the nicest way possible.

>>20521695
This read it OP

>>20495491
>>20495599
Thanks

>>19923116
>How did Buddha know all of this?
A long, long, long process of karmic cultivation in previous lives lead the birth of Siddhartha Gautama. The right karmic buildup lead to a man who could achieve Buddhahood alone. You too could to do this, but you probably won't live long enough and don't have the built up karmic background to do so. There have been many people throughout the eons who have done what Siddhartha did, and there will be many more to come who will also do it. tl;dr
>born in a palace
>realizes hedonism doesn't work
>becomes a jain
>well fuck that sucks too
>sits under the bodhi tree and thinks things through
>gets defended from demons by Hercules
>Buddahood
That's where he got it from. He knows that this stuff is empirically verifiable and rationally concluded because that's how he arrived at it: empiricism and reason.

>why is his view of self is not universally accepted if its empirically and rationally verifiable and you personally are capable of proving all of this?
Ignorance. More precisely, most Buddhist sects argue that it actually is. Normal people do not have well thought out metaphysical and epistemological schemas. They're just ignorant, and never think to question it. People who dig their heels in and say that ACKTHYUALLY they get to live forever because peepeepoopoo muh atman are really rare. You might point out afterlives, but remember that a soul and an atman are not the same thing. You can have an atman and lack a soul. Most Western Christians would, unthinkingly, readily agree with the idea that the soul has parts (and is thus not an atman).

>how can you have truths if you can argue against them?
Go ram your toe into a rock and then not experience pain. Does it hurt? There you go. We're part of an immanent reality, and no amount of pilpul will get you out of it.

>>18893977
I mean that bit about Hercules literally; Vajrapani is literally Hercules.

Read What the Buddha Taught, then the Heart Sutra. Do both, you need the Theravada and then the Mahayana no matter which way you go. You ESPECIALLY need the Heart Sutra if you're going anywhere near Vajrayana. You will obviously be using Red Pine's translation, which has commentary from a dozen historical masters. If you want some giga-brain shit to whet your palette while you find a teacher for Vajrayana (and reading Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism; it's Vajrayana 101) then check out the Diamond Sutra. It starts as a long form rehash of the Heart Sutra and then gets really cool and becomes a third-eye opening discourse on Bodies and Eyes.

>>18665359
Buddhism is an enormous tradition, it's not summarized with just the Dhammapada. What the Buddha Taught and the Heart Sutra get recommended here, but if you're actually reading the Dhammapada then read the Heart Sutra afterwards. It's short, you can fit it in a 4chan post, I can summarize it in this thread if you'd like. Having said that, "Eastern Religion" also includes Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto at minimum, all of which are gigantic traditions themselves. This isn't even touching Hinduism and Islam.

If you literally just want to read Plato, there's zero point in starting with Buddhism. Platonism and Buddhism have totally different goals, radically different metaphysical systems, and vastly different cosmologies. They also, interestingly, don't really interact with each other at all. There's no real analogue to The Forms in India or China, and there's no real analogue to Sunyata in Europe. Platonism more or less dies in Europe after Christianization, and Renaissance Neoplatonists had never heard of Buddhism, and it isn't until long after Platonism's third death that the British orientalists actually start reading Buddhists texts and stop jerking off about monastic hierarchies and lineages. Pyrrho's thought implies a form of Sunyata, but Pyrrhonism never really got off the ground and just ends up being radically misinterpreted by Christians (culminating in Augustine literally believing that Pyrrhonists believed exactly the opposite of what they believed). The closest you get is Cratylus, which again, is actually mostly in line with Buddhist thought barring a few areas. As said, there's no real equivalent to the realm of the forms, or even dualism (as we Westerners use the term), in Eastern religion. Manicheanism was never taken seriously. This means that what Plato was getting at never really comes up in Buddhist thought. This also sort of applies to Aristotle.

If you want to do some kind of East v West thing, then by all means. Dhammapada, Heart Sutra, move on into Plato. Then go back to Buddhism and view it from a Platonic lens, then go back to Platonism and view it from a Buddhist lens.

If you want to see a very bad example of East vs West dialogue, I can link you to an article by Edward Feser wherein he completely misunderstands a criticism of Nyakain philosophy by the Buddhist Dharmakirti, wherein Dharmakirti attacks the Nyayakin idea of Isvara (which, Feser, being a midwit leftcath, treats as some kind of nu-atheist screed). But again, it's a really shitty one, and Feser ends up completely misunderstanding Maimonides alongside Dharmakirti AND the Nyakins. But then, Feser writes articles criticizing books he hasn't read, so it's to be expected.

>>18667416
Plato refutes Shankara in Cratylus, ironically.

>>16211327
>>16211345
I'm white buddhist

Yes. The Pali Canon is dozens of books long, "just read the Pali Canon bro" is terrible advice.

In the Buddha's Words, or What the Buddha Taught. Pick one, don't read the other. The Heart Sutra, translated by Red Pine. Read it.

Then, pick Mahayana or Theravada. Fags on the internet treat this like Christianity vs Protestantism, but it isn't, they're fundamentally in agreement where it matters for you as a beginner. They are, however, two enormous literary traditions, so you HAVE to pick one to keep moving.