/lit/ - Literature

>>14270647
Buddhism is only right insofar as the areas where it doesn't deviate from the Upanishads. Also, isn't that from a Jain parable and not a Buddhist one?

>>14270666
>Also, isn't that from a Jain parable and not a Buddhist one?

This specific formulation is of Buddhist provenance.

>>14270647
What should one do in this case? Meditate?

>>14270647
With one additional sentence, the story may be made correct:

"The man laughs in delight."

>>14270647
Tolstoy has this exact scene in "A Confession"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lZZwozWViHtwolDHzM8GB1qgWfKbLkOh/view

>>14270647
Right about what? This doesn't say anything.

>>14271186
>Coomar

>>14271186
hi ken!

>>14271203
Buddhists are anti-intellectuals.

>>14271231
hehe

>>14271243

i'm not ken!

>>14271186
he's right but most Buddhists would loathe to admit it

>>14270647
"And an age passed. And a man existed called raj who wandered around bengal. And he encountered a person called hitendra building nukes. And raj asked, “hitendra, why are you building nukes?” and hitendra responded “I am building nukes for the impending war against the yenraders” and raj asked him “I see how many nukes do you have” and hitendra responded and bought raj down to his basement “you see, I have 2000 nukes here” he said. And raj commended him “good” he said, “it is good to prepare for the war against the yenraders and make it so bengal may defeat the yenraders” and hitendra continued to build nukes and store it in his basement for the impending war against the yenraders.

And raj wandered further until he reached the eastern reigon of yempur, and there was a huge mountain. But out of the mountain spewed water, and the water spewed in such a way that it was man made. And he enquired with the locals “what is that mountain we see over there?” and the locals replied, “that is not a mountain, but a water purification plant, it is made to look like a mountain to blend in with nature and also provides the entire reigon with water” “I see” said raj. And the locals took him to the top of the mountain and on the mountain were huge missiles and canons “what is this?” he said. And the locals responded, “these are anti nuke missiles and laser canons incase a foreign nation attempts to nuke the water plant, the mountain is reinforced to make it more defensive against nukes”. And raj responded “that is very wise, laser canons and nukes frighten the yenraders and slow down their attacks” and raj commended the laser canons and the water plant and the mountain which defended bengal and continued about his day."

>>14271173
Yeah, I was about to say this is awfully familiar.

>>14271458
What is this, Kino no Tabi?

>>14271480

So what are we saying here. Was Tolstoy a Buddhist?

>>14271663
He definitely studied Indian/Asian philosophy. If you read his list of recommended books, he rates several works of Eastern philosophy as essential reading.

>>14270872
Elephants bluff charge, running wasn't the correct choice.

>>14270872

if you're capable of seeing that all of the dangers in the story are our own lives, spread out over years instead of a few moments, then meditation may be a good start

>>14271186
based ken wheeler

>>14270666
>Buddhism is only right insofar as the areas where it doesn't deviate from the Upanishads
Don't worry. No Upanishad can be reliably dated to before the Buddha so none of them deviate from Buddhism.

>>14271974
The Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya Upanishads are almost unanimously dated as pre-Buddhist by Indologists and other scholars

>>14271458
[They were all pooing in that water.]

>>14271989
I bet you think Sanskrit is older than Prakrit too.

>>14270647
Buddhists are gay because they want to give up existence just because a shitty human life when there is infinite possibilities in the Universe and they can be literally anything and have awesome lives

>>14270647

Yes, about the world being a vale of tears. The life-affirming thing, the only thing possible for a mortal being, is not to flinch from the perils, but to plainly face and endure them, for the sake of the brief taste of honey.

To take the road even beyond that, is to affirm not only the suffering for the sake of the honey, but to hold the honey to be a sign that victory over peril, without minimising that peril, is possible.

>>14270666
So Brahmins extracted best parts of Buddhism and incorporated them into Upanishads? Good for them.

>>14271203
Try finding a deeper meaning. The man is being chased by an angry elephant, you can make a suggestion out of this by looking up what elephants symbolize then adding anger. He then goes into a dried up well with overgrown vegetation where he also faces more danger. There seems to be no way out, and more symbols. Buddhist worship themselves rather then a god, so it can suggest to make more moral decisions based on what you feel is right.

>>14272240
>Buddhists worship themselves
untrue

>>14272202
It's the opposite. The key tenets of Buddhism all predate the life of Buddha and are found in the earliest Upanishads which almost all academics say are pre-Buddhist. See pic related for an example which is just scratching the surface. I know that this is especially painful to hear for westerners who rejected Christianity/God for Buddhism and who have some sort of complex which makes them harbor an animus against those things; but similar to how early Christianity and the Bible is an amalgamation of influences including Zoroastrian theology, Babylonian mythology, Greek/Platonic philosophy, Jewish cultural roots etc; in almost exactly the same way Buddha during his life taught an amalgamation of Upanishadic, Jain and proto-Samkhya doctrine. The Buddha himself described studying under different teachers and denied coming up with anything original himself. It is only the people who came after him who erected this fantasy that he sat under a tree and came up with the absolute truth which nobody had realized before and then everyone else copied him.

[Samyutta Nikaya 4.117] "Found the ancient path leading to Brahman." "I have seen" says Buddha, "the ancient path, the old road that was taken by the former all-awake Brahmins, that is the path i follow, lost long ago. Just like an overcovered path lost long ago is that which i have discovered"
[Samyutta Nikaya 2.106] "I have not made a new path monks, i have only rediscovered what was lost long ago"

The past is full of suffering and if you let it take over your head, you're screwed.
The future is full of impending doom and if you let it take over your head, you're screwed.
The present moment is perfectly tolerable for the vast majority of the time, and sometimes is downright blissful.

>>14271186
this

>>14272509
>The key tenets of Buddhism all predate the life of Buddha and are found in the earliest Upanishads which almost all academics say are pre-Buddhist

Painfully untrue. What scholars actually think happened is that Buddhism (and Jainism) developed out of the same intellectual ferment that produced the Upanishads, which was in fact a reaction against centuries of Brahmanic ritualism. The Upanishads were significantly shaped and influenced by non-Brahman discourses, traditions, and castes (like Kshatriya), which is very unusual in the light of the Brahmanas. (There may also have been relatively continuous internal rebellions against Brahmanic stultification from within the Brahmanic milieu, for example in the Aranyakas questioning the value of the rituals.) It was only later on that the Brahmans codified the whole body of Vedic literature and reasserted their status as its keepers, and by this time, any traditions that didn't fit well under the brahmanic orthodoxy naturally left it completely, if they had not already done so.

In fact, heavily "vedantic" (mainly focused on the Upanishads, rather than the earlier Vedas as revealed injunctions) versions of Hinduism are often considered unorthodox by more mainstream devotional Hindus, precisely because the Upanishads still have many strange things in them, even despite their later purification and codification by Brahmans.

The debate over whether Buddhism or Hinduism precedes one another is idiotic and is only engaged in by uneducated nationalists shit-flinging on the Internet. Just Indian boomers, the equivalent of American bible belt evangelicals.

Of course it's true that the principal elements of Buddhism (like moksha) appear in some form in the Upanishads. This is because both Buddhism and the sages and discussions whose ideas are (partially) represented in the Upanishads sprang from the same intellectual context, the steady breakdown of Brahmanic ritualism. We can't even date what happened during this period with accuracy measured in centuries, so it's not like anyone can trace exact genealogies of thought.

Can you believe this guy? He just told a joke at a funeral

>>14271173
https://youtu.be/vk_UpsTBBoo
This is my favorite version

>>14272509
hmm it's weird because hinduism and buddhism are fundamentally different belief systems

>>14273599
You never smiled in a funeral? I guess you're an anglo.

>>14271773
>egomaniac LARPer obsessed with 'aryanism' and describes himself as a 'Hardcore right-wing Traditionalist'
>bald fraud with fake credentials (not an actual pali translator and hasn't written any books)
>creates fake accounts to vandal buddhist books on amazon
>samefags buddhist blogposts under multiple monikers with autistic vitriol
>notorious wiki editor who got banned multiple times and had articles semi-guarded
>none of his ideas are new, just rehashed from Kumaraswami and other trads
>claims to be a logical master debater yet all he can come up with are mistranslations, strawmans and ad homs
he is the spitting image of the resident schizo who plagues this forum who keeps replying to himself with 'based wheeler' (pic related). He even uses the same adverbial buzzwords like 'I destroyed this buddhist fallacy' or 'I logically destroyed them in debates'.

I mean just look at how he posts
https://buddhistgroup.livejournal.com/144788.html#comments

The dude is clearly mentally unstable and needs to be hospitalized. I am convinced that anyone who follows internet traditionalism is a lost cause.

>>14274211
>after 20 years of debating lemming "buddhists" I have left them in the dust. They are by nature, rats on a stationary wheel (sam-sarati). As flies hover around dung, so too buddhists around "buddhism" (rather a humanistic mirage and false edifice). As such, I save time avoiding most "buddhists", they are cannon fodder intellectually. Few exemptions apply
This is hilarious, I have no doubt he posts here too.

>>14272121

>there is infinite possibilities

Not true, there are limitations to existence. For example, with music there is a point where you keep innovating and experimenting but eventually everything just becomes noise. Also this works with color, there are only so many colors and color combinations before everything becomes brown.

>>14274256
shit analogy

>>14274211
>>egomaniac LARPer obsessed with 'aryanism' and describes himself as a 'Hardcore right-wing Traditionalist'
Is he really this based? I knew nothing about his racial and political views.

>>14270647
They were Buddies.

>>14274378
>Is he really this based?
read theory, incel

>>14274430
>t. non-aryan

>>14274378
hes not in to politics anymore iirc

>>14274378
>I am gay. Ive saved lives of several people, and I dont mean spiritually. Ive been tortured, stabbed (in Russia), and put down for being gay.
hol up

>>14274445
he's still a poltard

>>14274432
>t. 'pure' aryan from Bharat

>>14274450
>>14274462
So is he gay or is he a basedboy aryan that dunks on the perversion of Buddhism done by the dravidian untermensch after the blessed sage of the Scythians had entered parinibbāna?

>>14274476
closer to pic related

>>14274492
oops wrong pic

>>14274485
definitely former in that case

>>14274378
Anon, trad-ism is essentially just another form of modernism...

>>14274495
>>14274476
Ahem.

>>14274865

>>14274865
women and sex are gross

>>14273065
>What scholars actually think happened is that Buddhism (and Jainism) developed out of the same intellectual ferment that produced the Upanishads, which was in fact a reaction against centuries of Brahmanic ritualism.
This and the rest of your post is just ideologically-influenced speculation, there is no evidence for any of what you claim

>>14274211
Wow. I thoroughly enjoyed this exchange. In the beginning I was like. Look at this guy. But then I was like, whoa he actually knows his shit, then finally to I’m intrigued. Where can I read more from this guy? He mentions he has a website. Anybody got a link?

>>14272407
Yes it is.
t.buddhist

>>14275398
he has no books, he has a couple of videos on his yt channel where he spergs out like a retard on the topic of buddhism (and on physics where he makes false statements about QM and advocates falsehoods like universal electric theory/CMTU). His geocities tier blogsite is no longer up it seems but you could probably find it on archive if you wanted to have a laugh at his absurdity.

Boy oh boy I'd love to see Ken debate a Hare Krishna/call out Bhaktists on their pleb tier theistic corruption of the Vedanta.

>>14275442
He said he debated many people (which I highly doubt) and 'destroyed' them. Why go after low hanging fruit like the ISKCON retards? He should debate actual buddhist scholars like Jay Garfield or Bhikkhu Bodhi but he's afraid to lose.

Heck even a lightweight like Sam Harris can put this bald fatso to bed.

>>14275440
don't forget he denies ACC and claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine.

>>14275290
>Brahmanism decayed due to the upper classes’ obsessive attachment to power, wealth and heaven, and compulsive performance of Kamya Karma to gain them. Not only did Brahmanism become irrelevant but also it was identified as the source of much social strife. The age of the Vedas ended and post-Vedic age of uncertainty, insecurity and disillusionment followed. These were the ominous times when the ancient tribes were breaking up; kings were being dethroned, and kingdoms were being swallowed up. The world, made up of various perishable forms of Prakriti and dubious Brahmanic elements, was seen as a miserable place to live (Maitrayani Up: 1:3-4). Rebellion hung in the air like the thick fog in the cool autumn dawn. Thousands of wandering sophists, known as Parivrajaka, crisscrossed the country challenging everyone to debate them or follow them. The first attempt to reform Brahmanism sprang up from within its own ranks. A section of Brahmanic society, mostly Kshatriya intellectuals, became disgusted with the decadence of Brahmanism and developed a whole new set of doctrines, which they propounded in treatises known as the Upanishads. (Kamath, 2013)
>Just as the Brahman holy texts are devoted to the science of sacrificial fires (yadnya), the Upanishads are the foremost holy texts devoted to philosophy. The objective of creating the Upanishads was to revolt against the institution of sacrificial fires. (Joshi, 1997)
>It may, therefore, be said in brief that the Upanishadic movement was a revolt by the Kshatriyas against the claim of the Brahmans to establish the divinity of the Vedas, the efficacy of the sacrifices, the inviolability of caste, and the supremacy of the Brahmins. Such intellectual revolt was bound to develop into a state of intellectual ferment. The numerous gods that had grown apace since Vedic times, now seemed to be receding and merging into one, all-pervasive, spiritual, ephemeral, pantheistic, elusive, undefinable, amorphous divinity. (Kadam, 1997)

>>14272121
>they can be literally anything and have awesome lives
Do you think you're posting with shapeshifting wizards or something?

>>14275749
I find it funny and bizarre of Hindus to pretend that the history of their religion was one of harmonious continuity and that texts and systems born out of historically antagonistic schools of thought (such as the Upanishads as opposed to the Vedas) form one coherent whole, that poorly made attempts at syncretic retconning of such disparate materials like the Bhagavad Gita are far older than they really are, that the Vedic Aryans that composed three Vedas were peaceful vegetarian Hindu bhaktas, etc. it’s so dishonest.

>>14270647
The answer is to just pick the elephant, since the elephant will at least kill you quickly

>>14270647
yes

>>14276548
Keep posting.

>>14272181
ok, but if he had plainly endured the original peril of the elephant, he would not have tasted the honey?

>>14274211

the worthless academicfag will always reveal themselves, like this one. how do you spot them? they care more about appearances, "innovation", and social credit scores than truth

>>14274869

sometimes i wonder if 'moksha' is any more beautiful than a girl like this one

>>14271186
based wheelerposter

>>14277133
First step to being recognized by academia is to be at least moderately coherent.

>>14277336

today i will remind them

https://youtu.be/kVk9a5Jcd1k

>>14277336
t. Highschooler

>>14275765
the soul is eternal, so you eventually will be everything through incarnations, but will also have shitty lives, guess its better than being bored on a single nothingness existence

>>14274256
its theotically finite but when all possibilities are exhausted you lived so much it doesn't matter, like a beyond understanding number of years, trillions of big bangs and big crunches

>>14274211
lol, it’s like you are trying to get more people to like him. you are such a massive faggot that this guy must be based if you hate him.

>>14277472
>that video
kek. fuck academia; fuck its corpse with a horse cock