/lit/ - Literature

why not practice the Buddha's teaching /lit/?

the middle way goes beyond both vapid sensual pleasures, fleeting and unsatisfying, while not falling into the trap of moving into self-mortification, hatred towards the world, aversion, guilt, shame. it lends itself to peace, the joy of equanimity, confidence, and blamelessness.

no longer any searching for what the nature of things are - rather than oscillating between the always changing contingent viewpoints of philosophers, you see the entire domain of viewpoints as conditioned, impermanent, not-mine, and, jumping to the Unconditioned, one attains to a knowledge that isn't subject to change, is satisfying, and comprehends all phenomena mindfully.

enjoying this confidence, one goes beyond the brambles and confusions of opinions, teachers, reasoning, and schools, becoming an island unto oneself. nothing can shake you.

I haven't felt a smidgen of suffering for years since understanding this doctrine. It really is sublime.

>>22546272
It is interesting that the Sikh heartland straddles the border with Pakistan, basically in historical Gandhara, India's frontier with the Greek and Persian and later Islamic worlds, and so the least "Indian" Indian religions always grow up here.

>>22100625
Religion is a communal thing. No non-east yuropoor neopagans live within ten minutes of each other. The least autistic thing to do would be some sort of "western rite" Hinduism (or Buddhism) and piggyback off the success of new age/wicca/yoga stuff. Be warned that attempting to do any sort of stale reconstructionist larp is a thoroughly protestantized approach because it assumes some arbitrary period exists in the history of faith where everything was correct and only needs to be discovered and repeated as closely as possible. You'd have to argue in other words that maybe a couple hundred years of your favorite theology and praxis was "correct" even if there's a thousand years of stuff you don't like. You can study any form of "paganism" and learn that stasis is not the case, e.g. Hellenistic, Roman, Egyptian, Indian, Japanese. Gods are always mobile and repurposed. The most mature systems arrive at a kind of pragmatic henotheism where any god is a gate to godhead.

>suffering is bad because uhm... uhhh... it just is, m'kay?

>>21058816
having unfortunately gone through the ordeal of reading from all over the buddhist corpus looking for genuine teachings, it is one of the best introductions out there. even for those that base themselves directly on the suttas, they are not as accurate as evola's book. was a massive influence on the first wave of western buddhists which was a real golden age before the hippie takeover and diluted westernisation of the teaching, people like bhikkhu nanamoli, nyanavimala, and nanavira thera, who lived lives very close to that of the original sangha and based themselves on study of the early pali texts. was also praised heavily by the pali text society at the time

-sticks only to the OG suttas and therefore as close as possible to the original character and style of the buddha's teaching, bypassing later mahayana developments that are often questionable

-introduces historical context of buddhism relating to the spiritual degeneration of the brahmins; evola relates to modern times, which makes many characteristics of buddhism, such as solitude and self-reliance, perfect for certain people of our age.

-much of the 'separateness' of the buddhas teaching is then reintegrated with the primordial tradition by evola through, first of all, the buddha's own acknowledgement of his derivation from the primordial tradition, and then comparisons of parts of the buddha's teaching with other traditions.

-having being written before too much western dilution, avoids trappings of modernist buddhist lexicon and practice such as 'daily meditation practice' and the lovey-dovey interpretation of metta and so on, instead offering a very well realized description of the true gradual training of the buddha with various quotations from the suttas. a lot of the practice described by evola, rather than 'meditation', rather consists in disciplines of moral uprightness and correct endurance and withdrawal from sensuality, leading naturally onto single-pointedness and composure, then used for supramundane realization.

he knows his buddhism rather well - the only critique that I can put forward is that he borrows from the visudhimagga on at least one certain topic he does not understand for himself which are the kasinas, maybe others, but it is a small point of concern...

much more could be said on these points, but it is an important book, and could be a life-saver for certain people looking for spiritual realization - so much so, that today, with the major lines of initiation mostly only open and 'easily' available within islam, buddhism with its spirit of self-reliance and purely initiatory character, freed of exoteric dross, at least in the suttas, may be the one true alternative.

>>20207977
>>20208003
Buddhist statuary began in the Hellenstic influenced regions of historical India; colossal statuary is the logical conclusion if you can build it

>>20013867
The truth of transgenderism is also conventional. In fact, male, female, and transgender identities, like all things, are subject to causes and conditions. They are impermanent, arising and passing away.

Part 1/2

Prior to the scientific progress of the 20th century, Mahayana Buddhists were already aware of the importance of recursion in cognition, the pervasiveness of complex adaptive systems, dynamic nonlinear processes, and so on. The Avatamsaka Sutra in fact touched on many of these ideas. Now recent research is showing that Mahayana cannot be considered purely Indian. In Gandhara, there was a confluence of Greek, Persian, and Indian influence.

In complex adaptive systems, the constituent elements could be considered as existing within a web of processes, sometimes forming self-organizing nodes of dense connections; however, their fluidity and dynamism lends to the selforganizing capacity to reform their connections or form new ones, and they can fuse and diverge from various trajectories of the dynamical network. As a consequence, removing components from the processual network does not offer a true view, for these components themselves produce emergent properties not easily predictable from the individual components alone. To quote page 175 of Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life:

>"Entities that behave in these ways are loosely termed ‘complex adaptive systems’: complex, because their behavior is difficult to predict from a knowledge of their constituent parts alone; adaptive, because they self-organize into new forms or behaviors in response to their circumstances. You—like all organisms—are a complex adaptive system. So is the World Wide Web. So are brains, [coral reefs], termite colonies, swarming bees, cities, and financial markets—to name a few. Within complex adaptive systems, small changes can bring about large effects that can only be observed in the system as a whole. Rarely can a neat arrow be plotted between cause and effect. Stimuli—which may be unremarkable gestures in themselves—swirl into often surprising responses. Financial crashes are a good example of this type of dynamic nonlinear process. So are sneezes...”

Any books with genuine arguments that try to prove Buddhism?

>inb4, I want to hear the opposing viewpoint

Is it accurate to say that Buddhism isn’t so much a religion but more like a meta religion or guide and exercise on how to be spiritual?

Has anyone here studied Pali? If so, have you read the Pali Canon, and would you suggest any translations of Theravada or Early Buddhist texts? I've read translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Sujato, among others.

Daily reminder that buddhism is the foundation of European society. The aincent Greeks practiced buddhism, so did the vikings, until it was suppressed by Christians.

I have always admired sculpture which manages to realistically portray clothing and how it folds and hangs onto a person's body. I am not a sculptor myself but I imagine it is a very mentally complex task to imagine the folds, chart them onto a stone, and carve them out.

I'm extremely new to Buddhism and very confused about the texts. The Pali canon is supposed to be the teachings of the Buddha, but this appears to be a dogmatic viewpoint and much of the texts probably came later, especially all the monastic stuff that appears mostly relevant only to Theravada. Are there sections of the Pali that are most authentic, i.e. most probably from the Buddha? Is the Dhammapada that?

Was Buddha an aryan? From the buddhist books he seems to fit all the characteristics

The 32 major characteristics are:[8][9]

Level feet
Thousand-spoked wheel sign on feet
Long, slender fingers
Pliant hands and feet
Toes and fingers finely webbed
Full-sized heels
Arched insteps
Thighs like a royal stag
Hands reaching below the knees
Well-retracted male organ
Height and stretch of arms equal
Every hair-root dark colored
Body hair graceful and curly
Golden-hued body
Ten-foot aura around him
Soft, smooth skin
Soles, palms, shoulders, and crown of head well-rounded
Area below armpits well-filled
Lion-shaped body
Body erect and upright
Full, round shoulders
Forty teeth
Teeth white, even, and close
Four canine teeth pure white
Jaw like a lion
Saliva that improves the taste of all food
Tongue long and broad
Voice deep and resonant
Eyes deep blue
Eyelashes like a royal bull
White ūrṇā curl that emits light between eyebrows
Fleshy protuberance on the crown of the head

>>18981306
Scribes were plentiful in the Empire and besides oral traditions were very much a thing back then. Philosophical schools were literally everwhere as well which we have documented evidence of including Jerusalem. Greeks and then Romans literally ruled various states as far away as India and instituted their culture on them. Did you know the earliest Buddhist statues were done in a Greek style?
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_Kingdom

As well water is the best way of travel Pre-airplane, in fact since the Bronze Age merchants had made their way from the eastern Mediterranean to Cornwall to trade for the rich tin deposits there. It really wasn’t that much of a trek once the Romans made the Mediterranean their lake and got rid of the pirates which had happened by the time of Jesus.

> so much so that they subconsciously cultivated it into a form of religion based around the crucifixion of a man who lived and claimed to be the son of God
You seem to be getting the wrong idea. I don’t think it was subconscious and I am a Christian myself. I’m saying the truth Jesus spoke was that of Plato’s and not Abraham’s. As well we know for a fact that many of the early Christian theologians such as Saint Augustine came from the Neo-Platonism philosophical school which would’ve influence early christian dogma greatly, so really we’re only arguing in degrees of influence.

Are there any good books on the practice of Buddhism in Ancient Greece?

Yes and no. He only looks at the Pali Canon because that is the oldest text which means that it has the most Tradition. He completely rejects the Mahayana, which is just dumb because
1) the Mahayana is ironically a lot closer to what he wants in basically every way.
2) the Theravada tradition doesn't treat the Pali Canon in any way that doing this would even make sense. The Pali Canon is not a Bible or a Quran or a Torah, and the Theravada absolutely do not treat it like that. The Theravada Tradition is just that: the tradition of the way (vada) of the elders (thera). The Theravada is constantly evolving and perfecting itself. The Buddha set it in motion and let it loose, it's not a constant, and it's not thought to be. The Theravada is constantly referencing the Pali Canon, but it isn't bound by it (the Buddha explicitly says to do this in the Pali Canon). This is okay if you're just mining the Pali Canon to support your own pre-existing worldview, but it's atrocious for understanding Buddhism. There's a large body of information about the Pali Canon that isn't even in the Pali Canon (such as the Buddha's travels and life), and a third of it (the Abhidharma) isn't even by the Buddha but instead by monks some 200 years after his death (if you believe Western academics; the Theravada is willing to accept this claim because the Buddha says that it's fine in non-Abhidharma parts of the Pali Canon).
3) the Theravada ends up getting influenced by and reacting to the Mahayana anyways so trying to find some pure Buddhism untainted by stinky Asian Catholicism (they worship GODS and BODHISATTVAS! Ewww! As if the Theravada don't lmfao) is literally impossible as the only way to get Buddhism from the Pali Canon is via extra-textual sources which are obviously influenced by historical developments.

He also completely rejects Sunyata because it means that there's no spiritually impure permanent undercaste that exists solely to be abused. Again, this is fine if you're only mining Buddhism for what you already believe, but you can't just reject Sunyata and have Buddhism, it's just not Buddhism at that point.

Having said that, he very clearly tried very hard to understand Buddhism, took up a meditation practice, learning Sanskrit/Pali, etc. The fact that he then turned around and rejected it because it wasn't what he already had (Based Crusader Solar Imperial Neopaganism) is really secondary to Buddhism because he wasn't going into this to be convinced of anything anyways.

Don't start with it. I don't know who told you to start with A Bull of a Man. While it's important to understand the context that the Buddha and early monks lived in, I can sum it up for you: The Buddha was a fucking CHAD, he hung out with Gods, Hercules was his best friend, he wrestled Demons and made them cry, and then he dabbed on thots by becoming celibate (after running through his harem of a thousand bitches).

read the pali nikayas translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi for the Right View leading to the path of detachment and the end of suffering - practice virtue, sense restraint, mindfulness, solitude, contemplation of impermanence, loathsomeness, as outlined by the Buddha. practice these dilligently and you will become detached from the five aggregates that make up your experience; extinguish lust, hatred, and distraction; and become a Noble One thus gone

Anyone have the excerpt of the pali canon where a Brahmin calls the Buddha a non aryan, and the Buddha replies by literally calling the brahmin a nigger?

>The unbroken progression of closer connected events gives the appearance of
continuity, of identity, but this is only an apparent reality, not ultimate truth.

>We may give a river a name but actually it is a flow of water ever pausing in its course. We may think of the light of a candle as something constant, but if we look closely, we see that it is really a flame arising from a wick which burns for a moment, to be replaced at once by a new flame, moment after moment. We talk of the light of an electric lamp, never pausing to think that in reality it is, like the river, a constant flow, in this case a flow of energy caused by very high frequency oscillations taking place within the filament. Every moment something new arises as a product of the past, to be replaced by something new in the following moment. The succession of events is so rapid and continuous that it is difficult to
discern. At a particular point in the process one cannot say that what occurs now is the same as what preceded it, nor can one say that it is not the same. Nevertheless, the process occurs.

>In the same way, the Buddha realized, a person is not a finished, unchanging entity but a process flowing from moment to moment-
There is no real “being," merely an ongoing flow, a continuous process of becoming. Of course in daily life we must deal with each
other as persons of more or less defined, unchanging nature; we must accept external, apparent reality, or else we could not function
at all. External reality is a reality, but only a superficial one. At a deeper level the reality is that the entire universe, animate and
inanimate, is in a constant state of becoming—of arising and passing away. Each of us is in fact & stream of constantly changing
subatomic particles, along with which the processes of consciousness, perception, sensation, reaction change even more
rapidly than the physical process.

Damn

Buddha in Rome.

You shouldn't take up a religion for its defensibility, and I say this as a Buddhist.

I'd also encourage any Catholics (or Christians period) to read the works of Thomas Merton. They're totally useless for understanding Buddhism, as he sort of admits, but are a very good look at Christianity (Catholicism specifically) in light of interaction with Eastern religion. He at one point comes to the realization that all the time he spent trying to defend Christianity from what he saw as possible attacks from other religions was in fact just a massive cope on his part because of the lingering doubts of "but what if they're right and I'm wrong?". He could only truly evangelize by no longer wanting to evangelize; his desire to be right and dunk on others was clouding his relationship with God.