/lit/ - Literature

>>15254807
Buddhist ethics are refuted on account of being so world-denying, cringe and sissifying.

>>15254840
You don't understand Buddhism.

>>15254807
honestly yes. Just doesn't seem like I have the strength to follow his teachings properly. I'll hopefully grow to be less of a retard.

>>15255445
>he doesn't know that it is bad karma to ride horses, workout, or kill the termites that are devouring your house and that the Buddhist way is just to move to another house
Not to mention just normal living for any man with average testosterone.

>>15254807

"From whatever new points of view the Buddha's system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well, dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly. Moreover Buddha, by propounding the three mutually contradicting systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only and general nothingness, has himself made it clear that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused…Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness."

Sri Shankaracharya - Brahma Sutra Bhasya 2.2.32.

>>15255588
>rules for monks who are explicitly trying to remove distractions from their lives so they can focus on the whole "enlightenment thing" get in the way of doing stuff other than the whole "enlightenment thing"
Well... Yeah? That's kind of the point. There's a reason the Vinaya doesn't apply to non-monks. You're not seriously arguing that the Buddha argued that non-monks should live by the Vinaya, are you?

Any religion that advocates for celibacy for the laypeople can be rejected.

>>15255665
The Buddha doesn't argue for celibacy for the laity.

>>15255653
wait what? i thought he wanted people to go into the woods and starve themselves? the fuck is a vinaya?

>>15255690
No, the Buddha's doctrine of the Middle Way is explicitly against just going into the woods and starving yourself. It's why it's the Middle Way, because it's the mid point between unbounded hedonism (which doesn't make you happy, the Buddha found this out, historically this is considered a critique of Hinduism) and selfish masochism and self denial (which doesn't make you happy, the Buddha found this out, historically this is considered a critique of Jainism). A monk has nothing but what he needs, and lacks nothing that he needs. Much of the Buddha's doctrine is only of actual application to monks (and nuns), because the Buddha didn't expect the laity to try to achieve enlightenment, or even want to. There's only five vows a Buddhist layperson takes, the Five Precepts:
>Refrain from killing
>Refrain from stealing
>Refrain from sexual misconduct (no pre-marital sex, no infidelity, no homosexuality, no prostitutes)
>Refrain from lying
>Refrain from taking intoxicants
Laity are not required to take these, and face no punishment for breaking them (although they may receive secular punishment for murder and such independent of Buddhist holy law). Most Buddhist laity do not take all five, usually 1 and 3.

>>15254807
Because nobody needs to bother refuting it

>>15255768
The Vinaya is the Buddhist monastic code of laws and rules. There's actually multiple Vinayas, depending on denomination, and multiple within each denomination and school, but we can ignore that for now. Historically, these were not legally enforced by a secular authority on a secular community, although secular authority would offer to enforce them within a monastic community if need be. A Vinaya is usually a compendium of laws, rules, codes, and orders a monk must follow. All of them are Spirit of the Law, and all of them come with a story explaining why that law is in place, so that you know the spirit of the law. One common one is that monks are not allowed to swim. A group of novice monks happened upon a beautiful naked woman, bathing in a river. They wanted to watch her, but oh no, there's laws in place against that! They aren't allowed to be near a naked woman! So, they strip down, and swim in the river; they're not watching her, they're just swimming :^). Upon finding out about this, the law was added to the Vinaya by elder monks.

Monks are allowed to swim, but they're not allowed to come up with bullshit reasons to engage in sinful, samsaric behavior. No monk would be punished for swimming, but they would be slapped with this rule if they tried to pull this, because the Spirit of the law is what's important, not the letter. 99% of the weird bullshit in Buddhism ("no chess; no killing termites") is because of this, preventing autistic Talmudic quibbling by redefining things to get around the letter of the law. Laity are not held to this, and Monks won't necessarily be punished for doing what the law literally says not to.

>>15255671
did he argued to not marry or have kids?

>>15255768
>Laity are not required to take these, and face no punishment for breaking them
I mean... That doesn't seem to be true. No punishment according to Buddhism for murder? Didn't the Buddha say you will go straight to hell for eons if you kill?

>>15255835
For monks, yes, you're not supposed to marry after becoming a monk, nor are you supposed to have kids after becoming a monk. You can become a monk after having done both as a layman, however, and leaving a monastery to help your family during extenuating circumstances has always been acceptable (obviously what counts as "extenuating" would be a quibble). Laity are supposed to marry and reproduce, and while the Buddha does not explicitly say it's necessary, many passages and suttas can be taken as him saying that it's encouraged to live a happy life as a layman/laywoman.

Giving birth to a human, however, has always been held as being a meritorious act, as humans are uniquely positioned to learn the Dharma. Gods and higher beings are too distracted by their powers and pleasures, and demons and animals and beings in hell are too distracted by their pain and suffering. The idea of just breeding because MORE PEOPLE = GOOD is not the point, but Buddhism is certainly pro-natal.

The Buddha himself had a wife (Yasodhara) and a son (Rahula). The Buddha took both as disciples, and Rahula is traditionally held as having achieved enlightenment. He takes a few other, less notable, relatives as disciples as well. I've heard it offhand that Yasodhara did too, but I haven't actually read anything to confirm this.

>>15255883
Karmically, yes, you certainly get a bad harvest from sowing bad seeds, but philosophically I'd argue that it's not really a punishment if that's just how the universe works. Karma is just how the universe works, no one thing controls it. My point is that the Buddha isn't sending you to hell for swimming, or for doing anything, as the Buddha isn't in control of Karma. This is a criticism that sometimes gets levied, that the Buddha is "responsible" for Karma, like how Brahma is in Hinduism, or how Yahweh is in Abrahamism. That's not the case.

Nor are secular authorities going to drag you out and beat you for swimming or killing termites or whatever. You'll certainly be punished by the king, or the republic, or the emperor, or whatever if you commit murder, but that's for secular reasons, not because Buddha said killing is bad.

>>15255927
can you achieve enlightenment as layman?

>>15255978
In theory, yeah, you could just achieve enlightenment right fucking now if you really wanted to, because Buddhanature is intrinsic. In practice, the Buddha doesn't view it as very likely. There's all sorts of sayings and autistically large numbers, but realistically no, you need to be a monk to pull it off. There's plenty of benefits to being a lay Buddhist and a lay practitioner (Householders are necessary; in order to have the NEET masterrace, someone must cook the tendies), and the Buddha frankly didn't expect everyone to become a monk. While I've never seen anything by him outright saying "don't force people to be monks", I've never heard of that happening, ever, and because you can't force someone to achieve enlightenment (or do the work for them), it'd be completely counterproductive to even try, and would result in widespread outrage by other Buddhists.

>>15256094
Is it possible to know if someone is enlightened or not?

>>15255690

>>15254807
Sounds cool bro
>sit down for hours thinking about nothing
>starve urself as hard as possible
>take small amounts of poison until eventually u die meditating
>while thinking about nothing
wow great schematic there homeboy, really sounds like ur on to something

>>15256197
Okay, Mara

>>15256212
Well what if instead of being a bunch of pussies sitting down all the time, they became wuju ninja warriors and backflipped all over the place.
They dont though they just sit down and every morning they go begging in their communities. Pretty shameful imo

>>15256248
全然悟られないなぁ、君は

>>15256153
There's lists of characteristics of an enlightened person, but really it just comes down to observing how they behave (the Buddha says this). There's no way to see into someone else's mind, and there's no physical outward change upon achieving enlightenment so it's not like enlightenment causes you to glow, but yeah you can tell. There's quotes from masters and teachers saying that this is harder than "just look at them bro", but the Buddha himself says that you can tell an enlightened being by their conduct, so I'll trust his word that it's possible, even if it's hard.

An enlightened being is different from a Bodhisattva, who can manifest physical outward differences in appearance, but unless you're into Mahayana bigbrain stuff then you can ignore that.

>>15256248
Begging is a crucial part of learning backflips, it limbers up the spine.

>>15255624

>Shankaracharya

You realize this is a guy who believed bathing in cow shit would extend your lifespan, yes?

>>15256360
And the Greeks fucked little boys, your point?

>>15254807
He was retroactively refuted by Shankara (pbuh), ignorant buddhacuck

>>15255624
Shankara's rigid system didn't pass the test of time and remained shit bathing and cum eating cult. Buddhism adapted successfully like no other religion.
>From whatever new points of view the Buddha's system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides
This sounds especially ironic, considering what we know now about the world.

>This entire theory [of Shankara] rests on a fictitious foundation of altogether hollow and vicious arguments, incapable of being stated in definite logical alternatives, and devised by men who are destitute of those particular qualities which cause individuals to be chosen by the Supreme Person revealed in the Upanishads; whose intellects are darkened by the impression of beginningless evil; and who thus have no insight into the nature of words and sentences, into the real purport conveyed by them, and into the procedure of sound argumentation, with all its methods depending on perception and the other instruments of right knowledge. The theory therefore must needs be rejected by all those who, through texts, perception and the other means of knowledge — assisted by sound reasoning — have an insight into the true nature of things.

Can women even achieve Nirvana?

It's always men we speak of when discussing teachers and awakened beings.

>>15254807
>muh suffering
literally a cult of losers and crybabies.

>>15256360
And the jews mutilate their cocks, your point?

>>15256852
>it's cool for me to eat literal cow shit if some random other guy mutilates baby penises

no wonder advaitafags had to steal their logic from nagarjuna, they can't think

>>15256852
And as such they are to be rejected.

>>15255830
The chad spirit of the law Buddhist VS the virgin Talmudic pilpul

The spirit of the jew is condensed in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdbkvJznmwU

I feel good when I meditate, and I like Buddhist aesthetics. There's a Buddhist center near me, once corona is over I might go there to pray.

>>15256848
The entire purpose is detachment from obsessing over suffering

>>15256776
the left can't meme

>>15255835
Being a human is considered the best form of existence for leaving samsara, so no, Buddhism is not antinatalist. Celibacy is only required for monks and nuns. According to Buddhist cosmology, not all buddhas even create a monastic order. A celibate, renunciate order was normal for ancient India. This was just the Buddha's version.

>>15255978
Yes.
See: Vimalakirti.

However this is from Mahayana Buddhism (Post: Nagarjuna). Whether or not you want to consider it 'true' Buddhism is up to you. Although the monastics treat ALL Buddhist sutra as sacred. They see it as different traditions and different teachings for different personalities, basically. Whatever leads you to the proper enlightenment is 'true' Buddhism. We also have to consider the tradition of commentaries building on top of each other with most schools viewing a more recent teacher and teaching as their core curriculum. See: Gelugpa and the four different branches. All things are lineages and specific tradition that branch from Buddha.

>>15255624
>Moreover Buddha, by propounding the three mutually contradicting systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only and general nothingness, has himself made it clear that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions

The different Buddhist views are the means to let go of conceptual clinging, as explained in the Lotus Sutra. In the end reality is completely beyond the conceptual mind, so has to be approached via approximations. There are different levels according to beings' capacities and requirements. This is similar to general relativity being more accurate than Newtonian mechanics. All of this is dealt with in great depth in Buddhist epistemology and pedagogy. Shankaracharya is simply arguing from either ignorance or bad faith.

>>15256848
People who make this argument never understand Buddhism.
What would be suffering to a normal person is nothing to the arahant. Its about not being a cry baby and focusing on inner-strength.

>>15256838
Yes. There's a sutta where the Buddha says that if he lets girls be nuns then men won't be as autisticly dedicated to being a monk. I can't remember the argument his aunt uses to counter this, but she essentially says that if he's letting Untouchables be monks (Buddhism is not anti-caste in the sense of wanting to get rid of it for the laity, but the monastic system is entirely outside of castes, and the first of the Buddha's student's to achieve enlightenment is actually an Untouchable) then he has no reason not to let in girls. He acquiesces. This is how his wife becomes a nun, by the way.

One of the biggest figures in bringing Buddhism to Tibet was a woman.

There are no Theravada nuns, but that's because the Theravada nun lineage has died out, so there's no monastic tradition to induct them. There's "lay nuns", however, and there's a debate over whether or not men can make women nuns. The current Thai Patriarch (head monk in Thailand) says no, they cannot.

I actually have a book I've been meaning to read about a Feminist from the 80s who converted to Buddhism, shaved her head, and joined a Zen convent in Japan. From the bits I've skimmed, it strikes me as one of those "cluesless woman innocently dives head first into something and gets super fucking deep into it" stories, like the one about the chick who completely gutted Amazon, Google, and Microsoft from her life.

It's worth noting that Jainism explicitly believes that women cannot achieve enlightenment, the best they can possibly hope for is being reborn as a man who will attain enlightenment. But Jainism is... weird, and I think that it'll lose any incels who read that statement and think "FUCKING BASED" upon their further investigation into it.

>>15257119
Thank you, this is highly informative.

>>15254840
>and sissifying.
is this the new /pol/ meme? it just suddenly popped up among the typical battery of /pol/tard insults a few weeks ago.

>>15257378
>/pol/tard
Get your jew ass out of here.
/pol/ is a Dharmic board!

https://rightwingdharmasquads.podbean.com/