/lit/ - Literature

http://hardcorezen.info/zen-books-that-dont-suck-2

>>15188508
The Pali Canon

Start by throwing it in the trash and studying science instead.

>>15188660
r/atheism is down the hall and to the left.

>>15188660
That’s my career. Lit is an intellectual hobby.

>>15188508
read MahaPrajnaParamita-Sastra by Nagarjuna

>>15188508
Dhammapada

Buy a translation of the Pali Canon

Do not read ANYTHING written by M*hayana cultists it's all bad fanfiction

>>15188824
Serious question why do all the people here either hate buddhism or are hardline therevada cultists?

I think i'm going to study Vajrayana with a teacher after the quarantine is lifted. Seems the best method to attain gnosis and enlightenment without becoming a forest monk.

Hesse's Siddhartha if you're 12 like I assume.

>>15188508
within

>>15188508
Read The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Try to find an orthodox teacher.

>>15188858
The ideas in the Pali canon are assumed knowledge in many Mahayana texts. Perfection of Wisdom sutras list basic Buddhist concepts and talk about how they are ‘empty’, but that doesn’t make sense unless you know what they are in the first place.

>>15188858
Because becoming a forest monk is what the Buddha taught and like the other anon said, Mahayana is weird fanfiction. I don't see how anyone could look at a the history of Buddhism and reach any other conclusion. Stuff like Zen and Tibetan Buddhism is the result of a core set of simple, straightforward teachings spending a few centuries being slowly filtered through chinese folk religion and mythology.

People who hate Buddhism are the ones who got exposed to the weird, complicated, and thoroughly unnecessary mysticism of stuff like Zen and figured that all Buddhism was nonsense. People who don't hate Buddhism are the ones who realized that real Buddhism, aka Theravada, is utterly wonderful but is obfuscated by the more popular fanfiction sects.

>>15188858
because it conforms with positivist outlook

>>15189166
>the weird, complicated, and thoroughly unnecessary mysticism of stuff like Zen

lmao

Just listen to Alan Watts amvs, go to Buddhist temples for the Aesthetics

>>15189366
The Pali Canon is very logical and straightforward. Go read some popular sections, or even some other early Buddhist literature like the Dhammapada, and compare that to some Zen koans and get back to me.

>>15189448
i've read the dhammapada, it reminded me of the analects, just trite observations: be virtuous bro!

>>15189475
And yet, 95% of the populace has trouble with being virtuous.

Listen to Ajahn Sumedho talks on YouTube. He's from the Thai Forest Tradition

>>15188508
Start by realizing you already there

>>15188520
That's a terrible selection of reddit-tier garbage. Probably good to post it, so people know what not to read.

pic related or
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6FSq_ptJ-I6aTHT-XA_e0Q

if you want to listen to some quality daily dhamma talks from a conservative western monk trained in the Thai Forest Tradition

>>15188508
Give up

>>15188508
Dream Yoga. It's basically the short-cut to what Buddhism is all about. The point of Buddhism is to gain the psychic fitness to be lucid enough after death to intelligently decide where to go instead of deliriously gravitating toward the next available body. Dream yoga is about directly practicing that sort of thing and is generally considered the fasted way to achieve enlightenment.

Instead of starting with literature, I would start with trying to narrow down what kind of buddhism sound especially appealing to you. Try going on wiki and looking up therevedan, zen, or mayahana buddhism, lol up their meditation practices and figure out which sound better. The canons will just be general purpose knowledge and are fine but at least give yourself a better compass to navigate yourself through everything . Good luck

>>15188824
bullshit. Mahayana is the core of Buddhism, read MahaPrajnaParamita Sutra

>>15188660

>>15188797
Βased
Also meditate at the same time:
vipassanadhura.com

>>15189166
Brilliant post, thank you anon. I wish there were more people like you in this earth.

>>15191049
Mahayana is not buddhism. Mahayana is chinese folklore with mentions of the buddha. Do you want enlightenment? Theravada is the way

Do buddhists think that you have to cease suffering in order to achieve nibbana? What if I just accept my suffering and meditate on the divinization, the post-death release?

>>15189479
Seems a bit low desu

pic related

What the Buddha Taught by Wahola Rupola is a wonderful starting point and sums up the core points, what the "goal" of Buddhism is, who the Buddha was, and the metaphysical underpinnings of Buddhism. It also has some selected readings, but some feel that it's better to skip those. If you want metaphysics and big brain stuff, read Nagarjuna's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way. If you want more intro stuff about mindset, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism is great. accesstoinsight.org is a fantastic source for all sorts of stuff too, namely on Breath Meditation (I have four texts on mindfulness and breathing that I got from there, all of which are short, sweet, and to the point). Ignore anyone saying "just read the entire Pali canon bro", the Pali canon consists of literally dozens of books as it is 45 years worth of recordings of the Buddha's teachings.

People on 4chan like the Catholic vs Protestant vs Orthodox debates, and try to replicate that here with Buddhism. MUH THERAVADA MUH MAHAYANA. Ignore this. No Buddhist school of any significant size believes in denominational exclusivity. The Buddha taught some arbitrarily high autistic number of strains of Dharma (like 65,438), all of which are valid, all of which fill some niche. Anyone who treats Buddhist schools of thought like Christian denominations is just wrong. There is significant overlap, the borders are fuzzy and fluid. Zen borrows from Vajrayana, Zen is just Japanese Chan, Chan is the child of Greco-Buddhism, Theravada agrees with literally everything Nagarjuna said, Theravada itself has schools and strains within it, Vajrayana borrows greatly from Indian Buddhism, and on and on and on. None of them believe that doing something else will send you to hell, at worst you'll just take longer to achieve enlightenment. Denominational Shitflinging is completely anti-dharma; it is Spiritual Materialism.

Look at all denominations, doctrines, schools, and lineages. Find which is most appealing to you. And most importantly, FIND A REAL LIFE TEMPLE, RETREAT, MONASTERY, WHATEVER. Buddhism is incredibly applied, holding the Right Opinions is pointless if you don't meditate. Some are shit (If you're doing Zen, ask about Nanzen's cat, if you're not told he literally cut a cat in half then leave), certainly, so do your research. Unless you're a monk, the lay stuff will mostly be the same with variations of aesthetic. To put this in perspective, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism was written by a Tibetan Vajrayana Lama, but every Zen center and Theravada center in my state holds discussions on it.

>>15191311
the sanskrit originals of many mahayana sutras still exist to regard, try harder

>>15191663
this is pretty good advice except Trungpa was a degenerate who tortured cats and his books were written by his aids infested students. Find lama jampa thaye for a real teacher of vajrayana

>>15191358
You don't achieve Nirvana by stopping Dukkha (dukkha is more complex than just "pain"), rather you stop dukkha by achieving nirvana. A more proper way to view this would be: samsaraing causes dukkhaing, dukkhaing causes samsaraing, when both cease nirvanaing begins (if you want to get bigbrain, you're already nirvanaing, you're just dukkhaing and samsaraing which prevents you from seeing that you're nirvanaing). There's absolutely nothing wrong with what you've said, and it is a noble and virtuous goal. The Buddha didn't expect people to become monks (the entire Buddhist system is based off of the acceptance of the fact that 100% of the population just won't; most people WILL be householders), and spoke on how householders should act . In order to have the NEET masterrace, someone must cook the tendies. Being a householder and a Buddhist is 100% inline with the Dharma. The conflation of "dukkha = suffering" is a shitty translation, Dukkha is more complex than just "pain" but is "bad feels because of impermanence" (which pain is part of).

>>15191750
You forgot about anicca and annata, bit otherwise excellent and wise post, anon. Thank you

>>15191748
I'm not going to deny that Chogyam Trungpa was in many ways a terrible person, but many, even outside of his specific lineage, and Vajrayana as a whole, who will wholeheartedly admit that he was a good teacher of the dharma. I was more so using this as a point of ecumenicism, that Buddhist schools happily use material from each other.

>>15191750
yeah, could dukkha be understood simply as insatisfaction?
>you're already nirvanaing, you're just dukkhaing and samsaraing which prevents you from seeing that you're nirvanaing
i like it, it reminds me a lot about most nondualist doctrines, i know buddhists will probably frown at me for that claim but yeah, it is just what it is.
im not buddhist nor intend to be but i think the practical side of buddhism is valuable. anyway thanks!

>>15189166
>...mysticism of stuff like Zen
Not sure I can agree with this at all. Zen almost reads like those same straightforward teachings after being polished into only the essentials.

One thing I haven't quite understood of Buddhism is the anatman concept.
Are buddhists basically saying that there is no "I" and being free from samsara through nirvana means permanent death or do you get to live in some form?

>>15192148
nirvana is just a nondual state, fusion with brahman; buddhism has some ok practical teachings but it is metaphysically null

>>15189523
lol you're retarded

>>15192292
but do you retain consciousness when you're joined with brahman

>>15192148
>Are buddhists basically saying that there is no "I" and being free from samsara through nirvana means permanent death or do you get to live in some form?
whatever you can grasp as the body or the mind does not constitute a self according to the Buddha (5 skandhas are anatta), as far as nirvana goes the Buddha did not make it clear enough but said it doesn't adhere to 4 cases of 'existence, non existence, both existence and non existence, neither existence nor non-existence'.

>>15192292
>nirvana is just a nondual state, fusion with brahman
cringe Hindu drivel

>>15188644
Yup. That's all there is.

>>15192341
like Gaudapada, many other vedantists, christian mystics, platonists said that it cannot be covered up by any category of reason, quite futile to try to grasp how such a state may be, but we know that it is our natural state, our telos.

>>15192489
this

Buddha also came to the same conclusion in that it is a moot question from the point of view of someone freed from binary grasping, the Tathagata cannot be pinpointed in the world so how do questions of whether he lives on or is annihilated even entered into the equation? It doesn't, mere speculation.

>>15189524
I have this book. Fantastic. I recommend it as the essential starting place.

>>15191663
>>15191748
What's this about cats now? I am interested in Zen / chan but am unfamiliar with much.

>>15192528
Not him, but all of the people in his post still affirm that while transcendental, it still does 'exist' as a special transcendental type of existence which is beyond reason and which is not nothingness, and that there is continuance there of something which is intrinsic to the conscious being. Whereas Buddhists throughout history and on /lit/ will often try to argue against precisely that and will argue for something that is indistinguishable in practice from a dissolution into nothingness, and then when this is pointed out they will retreat into a "well it's beyond existence and non-existence" defense, but unlike the Hindus, Platonists, Taoists, Christian mystics etc the Buddhists are unable to give any reason why that is the case, because of their denial of any Supreme Self or Soul etc beyond the aggregates which continues in Parinirvana.

The only thing that saves the Buddhist theory from being an extinction into nothingness is exactly this Supreme Self/Soul, but if you are not willing to admit this and instead attribute consciousness/being to a transient bundle of aggregates as Buddhists do then there is no reason at all to accept that Buddha's denial of Parinirvana being an extinction is true, because in both cases (i.e. nothingness and a transient bundles of aggregates no longer producing the illusion of awareness/experience) there is no sensations, experiences or entity whatsoever. At this point you are simply accepting it on faith that Parinirvana is not nothingness but without any good reason for it. If the Buddhists are willing to join the club and admit that there is some transcendental Absolute/Reality beyond all mundane human conception and ideas of existence/non-existence then you guys should really stop arguing over it and making snide comments about it in so many threads like new atheists whenever it's a Hindu or Platonist or Christian talking about it.

>>15192706
There's a Zen Koan (a riddle with a distinct answer meant to demonstrate the incapacity of language to properly communicate reality) that goes
>Zen Master is talking to Monks, Zen Master says to tell him the point of Zen, or I'll cut this cat in half
>The monks start babbling out philosophy, and the Zen Master cuts the cat in half.
>Later that day, Zen Master is talking to another Zen Master, and they are discussing this event.
>First Zen Master asks the second what he would have done had he been there
>Second Zen Master takes his sandal off and puts it on his head, wordlessly
>First Zen Master says that had the Second been there, the cat would have been spared
The point is that Zen CANNOT be explained by words, at its core. Experience and action are the only means of communicating these things. This is also a point in Taoism, although the Taoist equivalents of Koans do not actually have answers (thinking on the riddle IS the point, not whatever answer you come up with).

It's a heuristic because authentic Zen teachers will tell you that yeah, the cat got fucking cut in half, at least in the story (whether it's a true story or not is irrelevant, in the story the cat dies). Hokey Hippie Dippies will come up with "it's a metaphor, bro". Chogyam Trungpa was a huge degenerate, but a masterful teacher, and there's some attestation that he may have drunkenly tortured cats for fun. I have no reason to doubt that he didn't.

>>15191976
Dukkha is the unhappiness caused by impermanence. Any and all "bad feels" that come about from impermanence are "dukkha". Dukkha is falling in a ditch and breaking your leg and being in pain and sad, dukkha is being sad at your birthday party because tomorrow won't be your birthday, dukkha is fear of death, etc. It's far more broad than "suffering", which connotates physical pain.

>>15192803
yes, insatisfaction, all things here cannot fulfill but people are easily deceived by the filling of the belly.

>>15192803
This ties into >>15192148, wherein the question of "what happens when you die while enlightened" is moot. An enlightened being cannot die, as they don't re-enter the wheel of rebirth. They've stepped out of it entirely. Their physical body can shut down (parnirvana), as the Buddha's does historically as a final demonstration of impermanence (and also nirvana). The consciousness (in Buddhism this is more complicated than just the brain as a thinky-box, but you can view it as "brain blinky lights go dark" for simplicity) also snuffs out, but then again the entire experience of what being enlightened is like while alive is completely different than what being alive is like for a being that isn't enlightened.

Which is the problem made by >>15192762, and anyone who adopts the idea of the Ego, the Self, yours or anything else's, as being a distinct Thing with its own self essence (it exists just because it does, not because it's the result of other things). The entire Hindu/Abrahamic idea of life and death is that you're a little ghost piloting a meat mecha, and at death the ghost floats away. To allege that there's no ghost leaves only the meat mecha, so when you die, the meat mecha just turns off because there's no little ghost.

See >>15192349. It's a completely unanswerable question.
>so what if it's unanswerable, I want to know!
That's the entire point of meditation. That's the entire point of cutting the cat in half. That's the entire point of Buddhism. You can't just be told "you know the right stuff, you get to be happy forever". You HAVE to work for it. Anything else is literal cope by the ego that is terrified of impermanence.

>>15192926
I had to sacrifice this for length: there's a liberal secular materialist view that consciousness, thought, and personhood, although not a single thing and rather a collective, is entirely "within" the brain, which is ALSO just your ego coping with its impermanence, as you're really just restating the ghost-piloting-a-meat-mecha theory, but you've concocted a particularly odd formula to describe the ghost. Thus, when you die, either this ghost has to shut off (reifying the existence of the ghost) or it has to go somewhere else, such as the Christian context of waking up in heaven (this also reifies the existence of the ghost).

This is completely at odds with Buddhist metaphysics, wherein a person is not just contained within their brain (Indra's net; because everything is conditioned, everything is conditioned by everything, it's just HOW MUCH it's conditioned by things that varies). This is the problem that is run into: to ask
>what happens to an enlightened being after they die?
is non-nonsensical at literally every level.

>>15192926
>An enlightened being cannot die, as they don't re-enter the wheel of rebirth
So are you breaking with centuries of Buddhist philosophy and posting the "enlightened being" as something different from the aggregates which continues after their ending? This claim of yours is mutually exclusive with the near-universal Buddhist axiom that beings and their consciousnesses etc are just products or emergent properties of the transient aggregates, with these aggregates and their properties coming to a complete end in Parinirvana. If you are not making this claim that violates Buddhist doctrine then what you are saying is merely figurative, and indeed there is a complete extinction of sensations, consciousness and anything else that would make Parinirvana not a complete annihilation. You can't have both at the same time or it's like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
>Which is the problem made by
You never explained what exactly was bad about any of that
>anyone who adopts the idea of the Ego, the Self, yours or anything else's, as being a distinct Thing with its own self essence
This is incorrect, in the Hindu and several other traditions the Atman or essence inside beings is not a unique substance or closed-off soul which is found existing separately as soul1, soul2, soul3 etc in different people but is rather infinite, all-pervading, undecaying, non-individual, unconditioned and identical with the Absolute itself.
>That's the entire point of Buddhism. You can't just be told "you know the right stuff, you get to be happy forever". You HAVE to work for it. Anything else is literal cope by the ego that is terrified of impermanence.
There are at least a dozen or so other schools and sub-schools of Islamic, Hindu, Christian, Platonic, Taoist etc which all similarly stress the need for immediate spiritual realizations and a direct intuitive grasping which transcends verbal knowledge, it's just that Buddhism has this false narrative on which the justification for much of Buddhism rests which Buddhists like to propagate about how it's super bad to talk about certain subjects like metaphysics and that talking about them is mutually exclusive with the aforesaid immediate spiritual realization and direct intuition of the Absolute, but this is a false dichotomy and the two are not mutually exclusive, and many Buddhists don't even consistently apply the same standard to their own writings and to Buddhism's metaphysical claims anyways. So in fact, Buddhism is not unique whatsoever in the fact that is stresses immediate/intuitive spiritual understandings and non-dual realization, but you got suckered into a bullshit narrative by the circular claims that they use to lure you in and turn off your critical thinking skills with regard to non-Buddhist traditions.

>>15188508
Here you go anon

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EkNVyd0qeOo

>>15193921
Bad start. I recommend this for a beginner.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbjofzkXXnI

>>15188660
reddit moment.

>>15188508
siddhartha

>>15193921
What is the appeal in this guy?
>durrr im a retard haha get it also woahhh the hacker known as 4chan called me!!
Is this the best zoomer """"comedy"""" has to offer?

>>15190933
How can I lucid dream daily?
give me a true buddhist answer not some lucid dream youtuber answer.

Im considering using REM rebound and sleep reduction to go lucid

>>15188508

>>15188508
At the end, where you give it up and become a Christian.

>>15195694
all of the weak faggots of /lit/

>>15195694
Reverse for me

>>15195739
How very un-Buddhist of you.

>>15196228
I began as a Christian too, actually. Born to it. Left. Became a nonspecific occultist with Eastern leanings for many years before settling into Buddhism. Became unknowingly demonically possessed. Had a series of supernatural experiences culminating with God saving me from them, removing the demon, and filling me with His spirit. Christian for 10 years now. Many wonderful supernatural experiences since.

>>15192762
>>15193182
thank you for these posts

>>15188946
#3deep5me

Can some wise one please answer me these questions:

Is the cycle of Samsara literal? Will I literally revive after I die? Is it literally me? And if it's not, why should I give a fuck about some "next life"? When I die won't I stop existing? How is it different from nirvana?

If the cycle of Samara is not literal, and people are not literally reborn, and it's a metaphor for ego and whatnot, the same questions still apply. Is death not just the same as nirvana?

>>15193182
>This claim of yours is mutually exclusive with the near-universal Buddhist axiom that beings and their consciousnesses etc are just products or emergent properties of the transient aggregates, with these aggregates and their properties coming to a complete end in Parinirvana.
Complete ignorant of Buddhism here, I have a question.

If the self is just the arbitrary bundle of senses, an impermanent flux, then why would a Buddhist care about becoming nothing after they die? Why would that even be a problem, it seems fine to me.

>>15196428
these question have been answered itt

>>15196478
>If the self is just the arbitrary bundle of senses
Buddhists reject the bundle as a 'self'

>>15188508
Is mindfulness meditation dangerous? Reading some studies has convinced me of this, even though it has helped me relax in the past

>>15193182
>There are at least a dozen or so other schools and sub-schools of Islamic, Hindu, Christian, Platonic, Taoist etc
guenonfag has entered the chat

>>15196559

>>15196538
I took that post to be saying that our consciousness dies, whatever it is that we're aware of and feeling, if it's not a self, when we die it disappears right? And if there is no self this shouldnt really matter should it?

>>15188508
Not sure if it's been translated, but the 八宗綱要 by Gyonen is a good overview of the historical development of Buddhism from a Buddhist perspective. If it hasn't been translated, see if you can find a historical overview by yourself.

>>15196612
consciousness is conditioned by mental fabrications (Saṅkhāra). If the latter fades the former fades, if the latter arises the former arises. Whether or not it fades or arises after death is determined by the karmic fuel the person (ie bundle) possesses in his lifetime. One doesn't become 'nothing' or 'something', they've simply exhausted fuel for re-becoming. This was the whole point of the Buddha's system, a middle way of viewing existence and non-existence.