/lit/ - Literature

>>15807106
kalama sutta. four sanctuaries. even if you don't believe in (or care) about reincarnation, following the dhamma will still benefit you in this life.

>>15807197
sorry assurances not sanctuaries my bad.

"'If there is a world after death, if there is the fruit of actions rightly & wrongly done, then this is the basis by which, with the break-up of the body, after death, I will reappear in a good destination, the heavenly world.' This is the first assurance he acquires.

"'But if there is no world after death, if there is no fruit of actions rightly & wrongly done, then here in the present life I look after myself with ease — free from hostility, free from ill will, free from trouble.' This is the second assurance he acquires.

"'If evil is done through acting, still I have willed no evil for anyone. Having done no evil action, from where will suffering touch me?' This is the third assurance he acquires.

"'But if no evil is done through acting, then I can assume myself pure in both respects.' This is the fourth assurance he acquires.

Compassion.

>>15807226
I can't force myself to be compassionate

>>15807106
this is my problem with reincarnation: all my suffering is mine, it is impressed on this consciousness of mine in this life. my previous lives were not what i am even though they may be karmically related. when i die all my conscious suffering dies.

where does choice come from in buddhism? or there's no choice? if so why couldn't I just say I'm not able to choose and I can just dissociate and take a sort of indifferent look towards whatever action and desire I might experience

>>15807106
>If the self is an illusion
This is a moronic claim which was refuted by Shankaracharya (pbuh) in pic related

>>15807382
I would be careful about reading Advaita Vedanta interpretations such as Shankara's as a commentary to the Upanishads, they are extremely reliant on Buddhist philosophy (Shankara is called a "cryptobuddhist" by most Hindus, and most scholars agree). If you want to read the Upanishads, work through them with editions and commentaries that aren't sectarian, or at least read an interpretation that is closer to the original meaning of the Upanishads, rather than Shankara's 8th century AD quasi-buddhism.

>>15807439
>I would be careful about reading Advaita Vedanta interpretations such as Shankara's as a commentary to the Upanishads
I'm not talking about Shankara's Upanishad commentaries you dumbass I'm talking about him BTFOing the laughably stupid "doctrine" of "no-self"

>>15807568
can you summarize the screenshot you posted? I don't mind reading but it's awfully late already.

>>15807382
but in this video they say that the self is merely a pointer, all that exists is space like awareness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KXidr0z1RY

>>15807588
He goes through most of the common arguments used by Buddhists in support of the "no-self" thesis and debunks them one by one by showing how they fail the test of logic and don't align with how we actually experience and perceive things

>>15807106
if you take meds it won't matter.

>>15807704
>who should I consult as a better source, some random animated video on youtube or the writings of Advaita's most important thinker?

>>15807251
You don't have to force yourself to be compassionate. Rather, you have to force yourself to not be compassionate.

Stop forcing yourself.

>>15807265
Buddhism doesn't posit reincarnation, it posits rebirth. When you die, only some things go away. Your body, and many parts of your mind, remain. Your ego ceases (if you want this in material terms, "your brain shuts off", but it's deeper than that).

>>15807281
I can go all big brain if you want, but if you're asking for the "ought" in the "is-ought" dilemma, then yeah, you could, but that would make you unhappy. Buddhism will make you understand the world, understanding the world will reduce your suffering, if you suffer less you'll be happy. Again, I can bigbrain, but that's the smallbrain answer.

>>15807953
go all big brain please

>>15807953
oh yeah, i know you can come to samsara again as any incorporeal being, that's why it is not reincarnation, right? but as for the second part of your post, the ego is the most superficial ''response of action'', the first layer of consciousness, but all its choices and actions through body and mind have consequences on that deeper layer of consciousness, from which the ego responds suffering or rejoicing. body, mind and ego are only means, the consciouesness is what receives and gives.

>>15807382
>>15807568
The Buddha did not teach "no-self", but "not-self". Self exists as a conventional reality which, like any object, is the foundationless result of codependent coproduction; it has no inherent existence independent of conditions.

>>15807106
If you were to undergo torture and your torturer was going to administer memory altering drugs so that you would forget the experience before he starts again, would you not still want to deliver yourself from the future pain?
The position in the OP actually stems from a fixed self which overidentifies itself with the present. Choosing to empty your bank account on a night of partying follows the same reasoning, because the future you that needs to deal with the fallout is separate to the self enjoying the wild night.

>>15807251
>>15807226
And you shouldn't either. Why try to be something that you aren't? Forcing yourself to be something else will probably just make you resentful and fake

>>15808192
Our conception of self is social, no? As in self-consciousness is social.

>>15808037
You cannot find a Self. A Self is a discrete, not composite, eternal, unchanging, permanent thing. It is improper to talk about something "not existing", because nothing can not-exist, for it to not-exist it must exist. Selfs cannot be found because even if you could find one, you couldn't find it, it doesn't change. If it doesn't change, you cannot detect it via the six senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, hearing, mind). You literally cannot interact with something that doesn't change. If it doesn't change, but exists at some time t, then it's not there at t-1 or t+1, so it would blip out of existence immediately never to return even if you could somehow see it. A really easy Self to understand is Plato's forms (the reason they're in a transcendent realm beyond space and time is to get around what I just said; Plato never really worked out to his satisfaction how a thing that doesn't change interacts with matter, or things that are subject to time).

That does not mean that things don't exist. Bricks, your foot, and you lack Selfs ("don't exist"), but if you drop a brick on your foot it will hurt. The implication, thus, is that you exist, but are composite, and the result of prior phenomena. Notice the fact that you can't have a Prime Mover, or Prime Movers, in this system. The universe stretches back infinitely, and will continue infinitely. The universe is not a Self, because it changes (this also gets into how space works in Buddhism, don't worry about that, just know that "the universe" isn't a Self).

So if there's no Self, then how can you have free will?

>>15808459
if there is no free will what is there outside of the senses? what i am asking is why does it seem like i have the ability to make choices? do you just call it a limited will? it feels like i am making choices

>>15808459
If there's no Selfs, then the entire conception of "free will" is pointless, because Western ideals of Free Will require a Self that's a black box that makes the decisions. So, then, how do these things work in Buddhism? The mind is composite, and Buddhism has come up with ideas similar to those of Quantum Physicists (independently) regarding this. While Emptiness AKA Sunyata AKA Dependent Origination CAN lead to a very hard form of determinism, we're given a few possibilities, namely because of probability (you can't predict the future, just probable futures; this is basically impossible) and the complexity and self-interacting nature of the mind (a mind can think about thinking). Clearly, this is different from how we go about our day-to-day lives thinking about ourselves.

This is the "Two Truths Doctrine". I've been giving you the Ultimate Truth, which is 600 armed four faces glowing golden Buddha type stuff. The Conventional Truth, goes back to dropping a brick on your foot making you feel ouchies. Buddhism uses this a lot. This shows up in morality. Why is killing bad if we're all just composite things? We could give a long, drawn out answer, starting with the basics of logic, just like we COULD describe bricks and feet based on a complex system describing their relation to literally every atom in the universe. That would be to say things in the Ultimate sense. We could do that. We could.

But that's dumb, so we use the Conventional sense (which, in comparing to Western ethics, usually defaults to virtue ethics meets pseudo-utilitarianism).

>>15808511
>>15808550
So, yes, ACK-CHYU-YU-ALLY, you don't have free will, you have something else, in the Ultimate Sense. In the Conventional Sense, you do, and walking around viewing things in the Ultimate Sense doesn't make you happy. That something else collapses to free will when viewed as a human. Why does it feel like you have have a choice, which really is just a way of saying "why do you feel like you have a Self, an ego"? Because that's one of the fetters. Buddhists love listing things by number, and the precise number of fetters varies based on context, but "feeling like there is a self" is always one of them.

That feeling, and that fetter, is part of being human. Letting it go is part of release. There's a danger of seeing the point here as just being "lmfao just induce ego death bro", and ignoring the prohibition on drugs and alcohol (one of the Five Precepts), but that's wrong. Ego death implies there's an ego to kill that exists independent of things. Rather than keep babbling about Ultimate and Conventional, let me poorly quote a Koan here:
>When I started, I saw the mountains as mountains.
>Then, I saw that the mountains weren't mountains.
>Now, I see that the mountains are just mountains.

Give a listen or read to U.G. Krishnamurti (not Jiddu Krishnamurti, the theosophist, this is another Krishnamurti, better known as UG), he speaks from a sahaja sthiti position about such things among others.

>>15807106
>I understand that karmic causality will affect others
There's no "others".

>>15808784
>U.G. Krishnamurti
beyond biased

>>15808192
>The Buddha did not teach "no-self", but "not-self"
Maybe, but unfortuantely almost all Buddhist schools misunderstood him if this was true and the Theravadins and Mahayanists like Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Vasubandhu, Dharmakriti etc and most of the various other influential Mahayana philosophers/schools vociferously argue for there being no self in their writings, evidently they all misunderstood Buddha which doesn't inspire confidence that anything else they say is right.
>Self exists as a conventional reality which, like any object, is the foundationless result of codependent coproduction; it has no inherent existence independent of conditions.
False, the Self is unconditioned and is the necessary foundation of all knowledge. If there is no Self there is no knower who can know anything. It's impossible to show that the Self is conditioned in any way, because any potential sign whereby the conditioning of the Self may be infered is itself witnessed by the Self as its object, and which hence reveals nothing about the witness who apprehends it but only contains information about the object witnessed by that ineffable and transcendental subject. All potential arguments for the Self being conditioned by default pertain to the non-Self because of this, this is one of the many areas where Buddhist philosophy falls apart. Nagarjuna himself admits the axiom that "the eye cannot see itself" and yet Buddhists paradoxically think that the natural inability of the mind's eye to grasp itself as its own object rules out there being any such unconditioned mind's eye even though according to their own reasoning it wouldn't have this ability anyway were it to exist.
>>15808459
>You cannot find a Self.
Because the finder naturally cannot find itself as an object to be found anymore than fire can burn itself, the Self is the innermost awareness of the finder
>A Self is a discrete,
False, there is only one Self in all beings and that Self is supra-individual
>not composite, eternal, unchanging, permanent thing.
correct
>Selfs cannot be found because even if you could find one, you couldn't find it,
It cannot be found as an object but it can be directly experienced in non-dual spiritual realization, the Self being our actual awareness it merely takes the removal of the things superimposed upon the Self for the Self to shine forth in its true nature

>>15809382
>it doesn't change. If it doesn't change, you cannot detect it via the six senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, hearing, mind).
The continuum of conciousness through which you experience everything never changes, only the objects manifesting themselves to this continuum change. This continuum does not require external data for itself to be known to itself, but its awareness is prior to all sensory input, which manifest themselves to it. It cannot 'detect' itself in a loop but it is the detector. It's presence is made known by the mere fact of sentience. Without changing, this baseline awareness always abides as itself.
>You literally cannot interact with something that doesn't change.
What would be the point of the Self interacting with itself? What would be the point of fire burning itself? What would be the point of the sun illuminating itself? Conciousness is unchanging and has no need to interact with itself
>so it would blip out of existence immediately never to return even if you could somehow see it
Conciousness never blips out of existence but is the necsesary precondition and foundation of all sentient experience, even in deep sleep only the manifested objects are withdrawn into the Self which remains as it always does and the second objects manifest themselves in the transition to dreams or waking they do so to the Self which precedes and witnesses them.
>The implication, thus, is that you exist, but are composite,
Where is the proof that the Self is composite? How can things witnessed by the Self themselves be taken as denoting things about that Self? (they can't)
>The universe stretches back infinitely, and will continue infinitely.
Universe cannot arise or exist eternally without a cause, and in any case this violates all the Buddhist claims about everything being transient, you can only have one or the other but not both.

>>15809171
yes yes we all get it, but there's still something you understand when we talk about an other, there's still a life you have to live.

>>15807106
I would refer you the the second half of this lecture
>https://youtu.be/Jr_20uEVOiE
Alan Watts is not the best guide, but he does put some interesting takes on the role of eastern cosmology.

>>15809382
>>15809389
A good place to start is What the Buddha Taught. After that, move onto Red Pine's Heart Sutra. I like this combination, because it goes over both the Theravada and the Mahayana, and then the very basics of both, and then the very heights of both.

I'll pour some merit out for you.

>>15808192
>If you were to undergo torture
I am familiar with these scenarios but they don't quite convince me. They always argue from a personal point when the original problem is specifically about going beyond that.

>>15809382
This sounds like you equate the self with awareness but awareness is more of a tool and not a persons everlasting core like a soul would be.

>>15807106
>"my" suffering stops once my awareness ceases to exist on death,
that's not what happens though

>>15811780
what does happen?

bump

>>15811868
in buddhism there is rebirth and suffering ends in nirvana

>>15813057
except that there is no real rebirth because there is no self that could be reborn
that's the whole problem here, did you stop reading the OP after the section you quoted?

>>15811868
Not him, but see above. The mind is composite, as are all things, so death isn't an "end". There are no true ends, as everything is constantly changing, which means it's continuous (a continuity of change). Plato solved the problem of Heraclitus vs Parmenides by creating two worlds, one where each is right, but the Buddha solved it by saying that Parmenide's All and Heraclitus's All are the same All.

So in a bigbrain sense, when you die you don't turn off, or blink out, you just fall apart. You've just changed in an arbitrary manner, namely involving a change to the ego, and the ego doesn't like this (the ego wants to live for ever, this is why you even want to find a Self in the first place). In a material sense, when you die, your body doesn't disappear, it just changes a little. Your spirit continues on, as do certain mental phenomena. The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a guide for how the spirit (and the consciousness, this is bigbrain, don't worry about the difference) should act after death in order to get a preferential rebirth.

This is where you get stuff like memories of past lives. If you accept that you can't find a Self, you see that your mind is composite, like all things. So that means that you can take some aspect of your mind, and put it in someone else's mind. If memories aren't stored inside a discrete black box (if it's discrete, how are they stored in it? Another problem with Selfs!), then why can't they go to someone else? This is part of why it's rebirth, not reincarnation: there is no Self to incarnate, there's just stuff that can be moved between a person now, and a person that will be.

Apr 28, 2020 — Robert Wright & Evan Thompson


Evan’s new book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist
Evan’s critique of “Buddhist modernism” and “Buddhist exceptionalism”
Which of Buddhism’s major claims are naturalistic?
Is Buddhism fundamentally different than other religions?
Bob defends Buddhist insights into human psychology
Evan’s case against “neural Buddhism”
Does a clearer view of reality make you more equanimous?
All about nirvana
Debating evolutionary psychology
Evan: This book is friendly criticism

https://meaningoflife.tv/videos/42741

cringe or based

>>15811553
Awareness is the inner core of each person, being the medium through which they experience everything, there is nothing more fundamental to a being than their consciousness

>>15813237
What makes you think awareness doesn't spring into existence through the composition of my organism? Just because it is the most fundamental does not mean that it is THE fundament. Only the next best thing.

>>15813258
>What makes you think awareness doesn't spring into existence through the composition of my organism?
Because I didn't experience my own awareness springing into existence from nothing, Because there is pretty abundant evidence from experimentally valid parapsychology research which has indicated that consciousness is non-physical, because of some of the implications of the hard problem of conciousness and because of the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of wave function collapse.

>>15807106

Why is any of this useful? Is there some way that you can make money off of this that I'm not seeing? Stop worrying about spiritual pipedreams and concentrate on things that actually matter.

>>15813342
>stop wondering about the nature of your existence
you do you bitch

>>15813371

Enjoy your cope.

>>15813373
I wasn't asking for your permission

>>15813384
Jumpy much?

>>15807106
If the self is an illusion...
The Self is not an illusion; the Self is an interface of Soul's Being.

>...and "my" suffering stops once my awareness ceases to exist on death...
Awareness does not cease to exist after death; if anything, it is intensified.

>...and "my" suffering stops...
Depending on how you have lead, and will have lead, your life until the moment of biophysical cessation, this may not be necessarily true

>...why should I make an effort to not rebirth? I understand that karmic causality will affect others and that technically those others are the same as me but still, I won't be affected.
You should strive to transcend this kosmos, rescuing, and impelling, others along your way, not perpetuate your suffering by reincarnating into it, thereby further faciitating the dominion of its malevolent ruler.

If you think that selfelectedly prematurely losing your life--that is: without having realized, and/or actualized, your noble potential-- would allow you to reincarnate into an existence that is better than the one that you are currently in, rather than into a worse one, you are ignorantly deluded.

>>15807212
Sitting in idleness while the world burns is the greatest evil a man can do. To not actively do good is the worst evil.

>>15813426
That is empty moralism which is predicated on shallow appeals to sentimentality, it's devoid of any knowledge or truth

>>15813426
That's judeo christian thinking. As cringe as it gets, because those people confuse action with virtue.

>>15813426
agreed. help it burn brighter!

>>15813519
that's simple regular narcissists thinking. I am victim, you must %whatever%.

>>15813426
Correct. That is the essence of Buddhism. This is why monks don't just sit on their asses all day and are constantly involved in the life of the laity, working to make the world a better place.

>>15813342
There is no amount of toys that let playtime go on forever, anon,

>>15813647
>Correct. That is the essence of Buddhism.
No it's not, Buddha doesn't say anything of the sort in the Pali Canon and he instead advised people to become possessionless monks and to abandon everything tying them to society. You just think it is probably because you are a westerner who grew up in a Christian culture and you (perhaps subconsciously) project those same Christian moral values (which you may not even regard as such) onto Buddhism even while rejecting Christianity.

>>15813664
You're wrong from the start. First off, yes, he did, the necessity for compassion fills the Pali Canon and the Mahayana. The entire point of the Mahayana is to become a Bodhisattva so you can keep being compassionate and liberating other beings.

Secondly, monks aren't possessionless. They actually have three possessions totally of their own, a robe, a bowl, and a razor, at minimum, and are allowed to "own" in a colloquial sense more as the need arises. Monks don't lack possessions, they just have no attachment to them. A monk can have glasses, he just is supposed to not be attached to them. A monk can have food, and a bed, he just isn't supposed to be attached to them. Do some monastic traditions practice austerity to ensure that? Yeah, because not being near a thing is a good way to remain unattached to it.

Thirdly, monks are supposed to loosen the ties to society precisely because they practice universal compassion to themselves, each other, and the laity. Monks in Buddhism have always been teachers and doctors, have given refuge, aid, and sanctuary, have been advisors to whoever will feed them (from businessmen to emperors), scribes, scholars, and holders of secular knowledge (Buddhist monks were, for many, many years, the source of texts on irrigation, and the source of innovations in irrigation, in North India and Gandhara).

For fuck's sake, half of the "monks must beg for food" thing is a means of forcing monks to interact with the world and force people to do good and compassionate. The very act of getting food as a monk is a means of engaging with the laity, spreading compassion, and making other people be compassionate.

See >>15810329.

>>15813765
the mahayana tradition is sectarian nonsense

>>15813765
I should add, there was actually an early school of Buddhism (the Hinayana) that did exactly what you're suggesting: get knowledge, fuck off to the woods, then either get enlightened and die of exposure, or die of exposure before getting enlightened. They totally ignored what the Buddha said (the whole "compassion" and "engage with the laity") thing. They died off and the Mahayana and Theravada have spent some 2,000 years shitting on them for getting it wrong.

So, not only did the Buddha teach compassion, but all extant Buddhist schools teach it to.

>>15813796
No, it isn't, and the Theravada do not consider it as such.

The Mahayana do not reject the Pali Canon, they just argue that the Dharma can be taught more easily (and indeed, the Mahayana have historically worked from the Pali Canon) via other methods. The Theravada do not reject the Mahayana, they just believe the Bodhisattva vow works according to different mechanisms than the Mahayana, and that the Mahayana project is unnecessary because the Pali Canon is good enough. The Thai Forest Tradition is the result of Theravada monks looking to the Mahayana and engaging with it, and historically there was plenty of engagement with Nagarjuna by the Theravada.

You're projecting Christian inter-denominational conflicts onto Buddhism so you can fling shit on the internet.

>>15813426
>Sitting in idleness while the world burns is the greatest evil a man can do
Sounds a lot like modern Christianity.

>>15813765
>First off, yes, he did, the necessity for compassion fills the Pali Canon
yes but he never places a such a high regard for compassion to the point of abandoning one's monkhood or to the point of getting heavily involved in the world, politics etc. Compassion is secondary to becoming a monk and pursuing enlightenment through non-attachment to and non-involvement with the world. In the Pali Canon rules for the Sangha it says that Buddha instructed them to constantly be on the move so as not to develop attachments to any one location, how can one believe this has anything to do with the goal of making the world a better place except indirectly?

>and the Mahayana.
fan-fiction spinoffs dont have much bearing on what Buddha taught

>The entire point of the Mahayana is to become a Bodhisattva so you can keep being compassionate and liberating other beings.
But what is even the point of doing so when according to Madhyamaka all other beings are merely the conceptual constructs of our own ignorance? It's like delaying the final Parinirvana to preach to the unreal beings in your dreams, there is no point to any of it when everyone is just your own conceptual constructs. Being a Bodhisattva would actually be a sign of ignorance because it would imply they still believe in an existing multiplicity of real entities instead of realizing everything and everyone was conceptually constructed without any basis to them.

>Secondly, monks aren't possessionless. They actually have three possessions totally of their own, a robe, a bowl, and a razor, at minimum,
You know what I meant, they are not supposed to have possessions aside from the bare essentials of monkhood

>A monk can have food, and a bed,
Is not the invention of monasteries where monks reside permanently a later invention which is never endorsed by the Buddha in the PC? As far as I'm aware Buddha instructed them to always be on the move and to never remain in one place.

>>15813647

At least those toys are something tangible. All this glorified mental masturbation accomplishes is harping on stuff that at the end of the day doesn't matter. You want to chase spiritual pipe dreams, knock yourself out (not that you need my permission). I may even mess around with it some day, but only after I get everything else in line.

>>15813852
You can't make a better Samsara. Your entire problem is that you think you can have toys and enlightenment, and you can't. Attachment causes suffering (there's a chain here, actually). The fact that you think politics can somehow make the world better is a testament to this. Attachment causes suffering, attaching yourself to more things won't stop that. It does nothing for the monk, and it does nothing for the laity, except everyone more unhappy. That's the entire point of the Middle Way: Stepping out of the cycle. You can't put out a fire by pouring more gasoline on it.

>But what is even the point of doing so...
Compassion. Just because something is a construct doesn't mean it's not real.

The Buddha never said no to monasteries, or even living in them for as long as necessary. The Anapanasati Sutta has the Buddha delaying the move from a monastery (the move is actually done out of necessity because of the seasonal flooding, the remaining unattached from place is ultimately secondary; the Buddha himself had favorite spots to preach and meditate in) for several months because everything at that monastery is working out well. The idea of a monastery was developed in the Buddha's day, and the Buddha sets out rules and systems for long-term monastic life and community in the Pali Canon (a third of it is just that). The movement between monasteries and monastic communities is one that works in some cases, but not in others (namely any area with snow).

In any event, modern monks do move around quite a bit, even though the places themselves are a bit more built up than in the Buddha's day. But then, there's been over 2,500 years between the now and the Buddha's day, so things are obviously going to get built up.

>>15813798
Hinaya was simply a mahayana designation of non-mahayana traditions (Theravada was labelled as such). It was not a distinct school.

Imagine believing any of this hogwash

>>15813935
That's true, but we can use it as a general classification for
>people who learned some stuff, then fucked off into the woods never to return, only concerned about themselves
The fact that the Mahayana were so disgusted by the Hinayana that they shat on the Theravada for being too much like the Hinayana (this is out of ignorance, not malice, the Mahayana use "Hinayana" to refer to ANY Buddhist or pseudo-Buddhist unorthodox school after a certain point; the Theravada don't actually believe a lot of what the Mahayana threw at them) should be testament to how much the Mahayana disagree with the principle of
>lmfao just sit on your ass all day bro do nothing

>>15813917
>You can't make a better Samsara.
than why do you say it's important in Buddhism to make the world (samsara) a better place my confused friend?
>that you think politics can somehow make the world better is a testament to this
I personally don't believe that but I gave it as a typical example that someone might hypothetically use when arguing for your position
>Compassion. Just because something is a construct doesn't mean it's not real.
There is no point being compassionate to things which only appear in your mind as the false creations of your own ignorance, this is a ridiculous contradiction and I find it laughable that so many Mahayana thinkers write long paens to Bodhisattvas while ignoring the absurdity of the whole thing when its combined with sunyata, it really shows the intellectual bankruptcy of the whole enterprise. The idolized path of Bodhisattva followed by special Bodhisattvas who are worshipped as semi-deities in the end becomes just another useful means, a joke propagated on newcomers that is eventually shown to have been completely pointless, all the Bodhisattva preaching being done only
to figments of your own imagination.

>>15813865
>craving for material objects is not mental masturbation

can hedonists be smart?

>>15807382
I don't understand. A lamp DOES reveal itself. The light shines even when there is nobody to see it.

>>15807382
refuting a moronic claim is moronic

>>15813982
For someone so upset that Buddhism doesn't engage with the world enough, you sure do lack compassion for it yourself.

You're making the mistake of denying the Two Truths doctrine. Just because the Ultimate Truth exists doesn't mean that the Conventional Truth does not. Go drop a brick on your foot and tell me that just because the brick, your foot, the pain, and the feeling of the pain are constructs that it doesn't hurt.

>>15813852
>As far as I'm aware Buddha instructed them to always be on the move and to never remain in one place.
the Buddha wasn't nomadic, he spent most of his time rotating to the same place to give lectures and answer questions (Jetavana, Rajagaha, Vesali, Pavarikambavana, etc). He did not instruct them to follow him wherever he went nor to 'always be on the move'.

>>15814013
>(Jetavana, Rajagaha, Vesali, Pavarikambavana, etc).
those are separated by way more than a few miles

>>15814002
>>You're making the mistake of denying the Two Truths doctrine.
the two truth is a trick created by the mahayanists to pass their ideas as buddhist

>>15813852
>yes but he never places a such a high regard for compassion to the point of abandoning one's monkhood or to the point of getting heavily involved in the world, politics etc.
Monks are allowed to leave the monastery to tend to worldly affairs (namely anything involving their parents or children) without it being considered a breaking of vows. The Buddha himself, also, stopped a clan war (that wasn't going to directly interfere with the sangha). He actually did that a few times.

Buddhists have, also, gotten involved in politics. So while the anon up thread is correct, the idea that these things never happen or have no place is just wrong. There is a time and a place for such things, and "getting involved" where it isn't helpful is just dumb. At that point you're just asking that monks have attachments because attachments make you happy (they don't).

>>15814002
The two truths doctrine is a cheap cop out. Cover your ass by claiming contradictory things and pretending one of them is just 2deep4u

>>15814032
The Theravada use the Two Truths Doctrine as well. It's literally in the Pali Canon (which is where the Mahayana get it).

>>15814024
they were monasteries (or contained monasteries) approved by the Buddha himself. Most sutta's have him situated at these monasteries and rarely in gardens or the forest, which suggests that he would usually stay around these same places possibly for a long while. Again he wasn't a nomad.

>>15814002
>, you sure do lack compassion for it yourself.
I haven't said anything bad about compassion or said that one shouldn't be compassionate, just that there is no point to being compassionate to things which have the same degree of unreality as the people in your dreams
>You're making the mistake of denying the Two Truths doctrine.
No I'm not, I'm saying that Madhyamaka denies the possibility of ever reliably interacting with other real entities with their own suffering, because other beings are just the creations of conceptual constructs, but since there is no cosmic mind which conceptually creates everyone in a conceptually constructed world that we mutually live and interact in, there is only the conceptual constructs of individuals, it results in a quasi-solipsism that means that nobody we interact with is a real entity but is just a projection of our mind's ignorance, ergo there is no suffering entity that would give us a reason to be compassionate to them

>And this reasoning has the peculiar consequence that, if one came to know and perceive that all entities are in fact without svabhava, i.e. are conceptual constructs, then the false belief and perception which enables one to participate in an (apparently) public world would be destroyed. The enlightened Madhyamika would see not only that all objects of the supposedly public world are conceptual constructs but also that the very people with whom he might share the publicly accessible world are themselves his own conceptual constructs. There are in fact no other people who have similar karmavipaka to oneself and with whom one might therefore participate in a commonly acknowledged conceptually constructed world! The enlightened Madhyamika must surely be a solipsist (which seems to me to be a peculiar sort of enlightenment).

>It is difficult to see how, in this condition, the bodhisattva ideal - which is a fundamental pillar of Mahayana (and hence Madhyamaka) spirituality - could be enacted. It does, after all, seem to be a real paradox (and by this. I mean a non-sensical statement, a contradiction) that the bodhisattva saves all sentient beings yet there are no sentient beings to be saved (for they are all the bodhisattva's own conceptual constructs). The realization of emptiness - i.e. of the conceptually constructed nature of everything, including all sentient beings - would seem to be incompatible with the ideal of compassion. The bodhisattva who holds together knowledge of emptiness and compassion is not so much extraordinary as deeply puzzling.

>>15814075
You're absolutely right, and what you've said agrees totally with the Heart Sutra, and the Theravada tradition.

And I (a construct) am going to hold your hand (a construct) on a hot stove (a construct), and we're going to see how long you (a construct) can stand there and say
>ACK-CHU-YU-ALLY PAIN IS JUST A CONSTRUCT SO IT DOESN'T MATTER
given that you aren't an enlightened master monk, I'm willing to bet that you'd be squirming and screaming and begging me to let go (you cannot overpower me, pic related is me) before you can finish that sentence. If you don't like that the world is far more complicated than simple reason and logic would have you believe, then I'd suggest meditating on it.

>>15814175
this is not an argument, you aren't saying anything new, stop avoiding the issue

>>15813985
> A lamp DOES reveal itself. The light shines even when there is nobody to see it.
"Reveal" means "to make itself known" and is inherently connected with the concept of an observer or intelligence to whom X is revealed, whereas shining is a description of something's phenomenal properties. Shankaracharya is saying there that the luminosity of the lamp fails as an analogy for the intellect being self-revealing because lamps are only revealed when there is a sentient presence who comes into contact with them and who apprehends their light. He writes "Although a lamp, being luminous, reveals other things, yet it is, just like a jar etc., invariably revealed by an intelligence other than itself, Since this is so, the lamp cannot but be revealed by something other than itself."

If lamps were truly self-revealing they would always be known to sentient beings even without one of those sentient presences coming into proximity with them, which is why Shankaracharya writes

"Your statement that the (self-revealing) lamp reveals both itself and the jar is wrong. Why? Because what can its condition be when it does not reveal itself? As a matter of fact we notice no difference in it, either directly or indirectly. A thing is said to be revealed only when we notice some difference in it through the presence or absence of the revealing agent. But there can be no question of a lamp being present before or absent from itself; and when no difference it caused by the presence or absence, it is idle to say that the lamp reveals itself."

And then he writes about how since there is doubt the reasonable course is to infer on the analogy of observed facts and these lead to the position that since external objects whether luminous (lamps) or non-luminous (jars) are only revealed by coming into contact with awareness as the objects of this awareness, it indicates that our minds are not self-revealing but are also revealed by a sentience which observes the mind as its object, and this is shown by how our thoughts present themselves as objects to a witnessing consciousness just as sensory data representing external objects are. The mind being defined by its activities like thought and memory, individual thoughts and memories surely do not have individual 'thought-consciousnesses' and memory-consciousness' blinking in and out of existence without there being any separate witness who observes all of them in a continuum, this is not how we experience consciousness and this is also something Shankaracharya elsewhere shows is wrong.

>>15814175
>If you don't like that the world is far more complicated than simple reason and logic would have you believe
I actually whole-heartedly accept this as true, but I still think reason has its place in helping to identify and eliminate incoherent explanations of the universe and existence, and it's for this reason that I reject Buddhism

>>15814463
So the self is some kind of meta-awareness?

>>15814463
how come you believe, not know, but believe that some mental gymnastics is able to talk accurately about reality

>>15814455
Rejecting the Two Truths Doctrine because you don't like the answers it leads to isn't an argument either, it's just stamping your feet and getting upset.

>>15814463
Reality doesn't have to be perfectly coherent to you right now. More importantly, any "coherent" explanation of the universe will ultimately be so unwieldy as to be pointless. Perfectly describing everything takes too long. Not accepting the Two Truths Doctrine out of sheer convenience and necessity is ludicrous. We COULD describe tables according to a vast web of coordinates and angles and relations to literally everything... or we could just call it a table.

>>15814539
The different Hindu schools all teaching different conceptions of what the self or Self is. I find the explanation of the Advaita Vedanta school to be the most coherent and the closet that I have found to a correct phenomenological explanation of how I personally experience consciousness. Some of the other non-dual Hindu schools like Trika Shaivism have a similar view of consciousness. The best way to understand it is just to read Shankara's works which have all been translated although a quick summary would be that the Self is the unchanging witness-consciousness in which everything else like thoughts and objects appear. The Self is not identical with waking consciousness though, because It transcends waking, dream and deep-sleep which all appear in It as superimposed states that It witnesses.

Pic related is another summary of the Advaita perspective on consciousness/Self which is taken from a page of this longer textbook here

https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/a-history-of-indian-philosophy-volume-2/d/doc209866.html

another text you check out for a quick TLDR of the Advaita position on the Self would be the Ashtavakra Gita

https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita.html

>>15814075
>No I'm not, I'm saying that Madhyamaka denies the possibility of ever reliably interacting with other real entities
Recognizing the Emptiness of the constructs isn't denying the possibility of interaction, it's the only way to ever accept it. To deny the Emptiness of the constructs is to reify the existence of some external impermanent thing that never changes, in doing so denying the possibility of interaction itself. Emptiness means that the only thing that is IS the interaction; a lack of Emptiness means interaction is impossible.

If you create some unchanging impermanent Self that only exists in your head, then you're denying the interaction of the real thing anyways, because you're saying that something is only real if it's in your head.

>>15814047
It's actually in the Abhidarma Pitaka, and wasn't explicitly mentioned by the Buddha during his life time. In fact the Mahayanists (then known as Mahāsāṃghika) appropriated the 2 Truths Doctrine from the Sarvastivadins (or rather the preceding school known as Sthavira-nikāya).

The two truths doctrine was really a heuristic device used by Abhidharmikas to interpret the Buddha's words in accordance with the warning given in Neyyatha Sutta (AN I.60) that a meaning within a discourse was to either be clear and not inferred, or a meaning within a discourse was to be inferred and not be presented as clear. The solution to this was to separate the ultimate meaning (paramārtha-satya) of a discourse with its conventional meaning (saṁvṛti-satya), this way the Neyyatha Sutta would be upheld.

>The question of which discourses of the Buddha are of explicit meaning (nitattha) and which require interpretation (neyyattha) became one of the most intensely debated issues in Buddhist hermeneutics. Starting with the early Indian Buddhist schools, the debate continued in such later Mahayana sutras as the Aksayamatinirdesa and the Samdhinirmocana. The controversy continued even beyond India, in Sri Lanka, China, and Tibet. The Pali commentaries decided this issue on the basis of the Abhidhamma distinction between ultimate realities and conventional realities. Manorathapurani (II.118) states: "Those suttas that speak of one; person (puggala), two persons, etc., require interpretation, for their meaning has to be interpreted in the light of the fact that in the ultimate sense a person does not exist (paramatthato pana puggalo nama natthi) . One who misconceives the suttas that speak about person, holding that the person exists in the ultimate sense, explains a discourse whose meaning requires interpretation as one whose meaning is explicit. A sutta whose meaning is explicit is one that explains impermanence, suffering, and non-self; for in this case the meaning is simply impermanence, suffering, and non-self. One who says, 'This discourse requires interpretation/ and interprets it in such a way as to affirm that 'there is the permanent, there is the pleasurable, there is a self/ explains a sutta of explicit meaning as one requiring interpretation." The first criticism here is probably directed against the Puggalavadins, who held the person to be. ultimately existent; The latter might have been directed against an early form, of the tathagatagdrbha theory, which (in the Mahayana Parinirvana Sutra) affirmed a permanent, blissful, pure self. (B. Boddhi, 2000)

>>15814772
I wholeheartedly respect your views but I'm afraid Advaita is incoherent babble and based not on logic but on scriptural dogma, with large swathes of Buddhist appropriated ideas.

Pic related is a summary of the history of Advaita's crypto-buddhism in a nutshell.

>>15814888
trips of 8-fold truth

>>15814817
>Recognizing the Emptiness of the constructs isn't denying the possibility of interaction, it's the only way to ever accept it
No it's not, that's the whole point of what I'm saying, *there are no interactions possible* because of how Madhyamaka makes all conceptual constructs the creation of the ignorance/mind of specific individuals while denying the existence of any plane of existence whereby individuals could interact despite their lack of a shared pool of conceptual constructs. If there is no reality where existing bodies actually interact, and no cosmic mind which creates a conceptually constructed universe for people to mutually interact, and if everyone has their own walled off individual realm of individually-constructed concepts then there is no way for people to actually interact with other suffering entities instead of the unreal (and completely unconscious) creations of that individual's conceptual constructs.

>To deny the Emptiness of the constructs is to reify the existence of some external impermanent thing that never changes,
No that's not the point anon. The point is that if everything and all interactions and conversations are not happening in some shared plane of existence but are only the conceptual constructs appearing in your own mind and not in anyone else's head than there is no way for you actually interact with any other suffering beings because all the people appearing in your vision that you could preach about Buddhism to wouldn't be suffering entities but false creations of your own mind just like the people in your dreams.

Why do you insist on posting these ridiculous strawman arguments over and over again which completely ignore the obvious implication of what I'm saying? It seems like sometimes you have some pasta about how "everyone who disagrees with me is making this one mistake" and then you copy and paste it with slight modification as a substitute for a real argument without even stopping to see if the response is even related to the discussion at hand, here in this case it wasn't at all.

>>15814888
>Pic related
refuted in pic related

>>15814954
>conceptual constructs
are you the guy that read a few pages of the burton dude and kept shilling his book with these same buzzwords?

>>15814965
cope harder shitskin

>>15814973
Even if I was an Indian, which I'm not, it would be better than being a neurotic rat-faced Jew like you

>If the self is an illusion and "my" suffering stops once my awareness ceases to exist on death

this isn't buddhism. buddha teaches literal rebirth. you will go through near eternal hell realms if you fall for this.

it's more like buddha doesn't teach in the existence of a permanent unchanging self (like a soul). this doesn't mean your death will be like an atheist materialst...

remember, buddha literally could recall his past lives.

>>15814981
>i-m not indian!
sry Rajeesh, you've already been outed before

>>15814954
>The point is that if everything and all interactions and conversations are not happening in some shared plane of existence
They are. It's called reality. It's why things can interact: Because they're real. They're real because they're Empty. If they weren't Empty, they wouldn't be real. If they aren't real, they aren't Empty. The entire point is that the constructs in your head are just constructs. That doesn't mean that they don't exist, or that there's no truth to the constructs, or that the constructs are wrong, but that the constructs don't describe the totality of reality. That's it. That's all there is to it.

This has been stated to you several times in this thread, and several times in every thread, including the one where you claimed to have read the entire Pali Canon in one sitting. Just because "table" isn't 100% accurate doesn't mean that tables aren't real.

>>15814888
BASED and checked

>>15814954
that's real fucking rich coming from the hipster who chose an obscure atheist-hindu heresy so you could spam the same five walltext screencaps about how he personally has "refuted" (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean) some strawman he concocted

posters in this thread seem to be very knowledgeable in Buddhism. What books would you guys suggest for a goes-to-church-once-a-year-at-Christmas Christian to gain more knowledge on Buddhism? I gained a surface level-knowledge after my grandfather died and I read Nietzsche, but I'd like get a deeper understanding.
What is Buddhism all about for you? Should I go live in a monastery for 5 years? What drugs should I/do you take? Daily practices? It always seemed to me that if rebirth and an eternal universal is real then we would relive this life over and over, but this isn't what you guys believe and I personally don't like the implications of that idea.

>>15815054
>t's called reality. It's why things can interact: Because they're real. They're real because they're Empty. If they weren't Empty, they wouldn't be real. If they aren't real, they aren't Empty.
spare me the bullshit please

>but that the constructs don't describe the totality of reality. >That's it. That's all there is to it.

1) Madhyamaka denies that is a physical world existing *independently of our conceptual constructs* as a shared plane of existence for us to mutually interact in
2) Madhyamaka at the same times says that individuals have their own nexus of conceptual constructs which is different from other individuals, and that there is no shared pool of constructs or cosmic construction in which individuals interact in mutual medium or plane, but it limits everyone to their own constructs
3) This leaves everyone walled off in their own dream of conceptual constructs, with no way to interact with other beings aside from the unconscious dream-like figures constructed out of ignorance by that individuals conceptual constructs, ergo no real interaction with other beings who also suffer is possible

>>15815085
>>15814966

>>15815153
>1) Madhyamaka denies that is a physical world existing *independently of our conceptual constructs* as a shared plane of existence for us to mutually interact in
No it doesn't. This is your entire problem: you're arguing against a strawman. This is not what Buddhists believe, this is not what Buddhists say, and this is not what Emptiness means. This entire line here is REFUTED by the very post you're quoting. In fact, given that you were REFUTED before you even made this post, you were RETROACTIVELY REFUTED.

>>15815163
Its you isnt it? Guenonfag returns to /lit/ after skimming a book he tried to shill talking about 'nagarjunian conceptual constructs' and now he simply regurgitates its talking points and repeats the same lines from a few pages.

>>15815204
Madhyamaka acknowledges that the world exists conditionally in people's conceptual constructs but I've read before that Madhyamaka does not say that there is a real and physically existing world of objects existing independently of our conceptual constructs which produces internal mental activity and sight etc through how external objects interface with the sensory organs and they typically argued against the various schools who held to some form of this, if you are going to claim otherwise please provide a source.

>>15815125
Two good starting books are What the Buddha Taught, and In the Buddha's Words. They're both Theravada, quote the Pali Canon, and are focused on explaining the basics to a Westerner who is totally unfamiliar with this stuff. The Heart Sutra, translated by Red Pine, is a good followup. This is a Mahayana text (the Heart Sutra, in truth, is closer to the Nicene Creed than the Bible in purpose; it's also about the same length). He uses the commentary of like ten other commentators alongside his own. It's not long, I could do a line by line summary if you really wanted. I like this combo because it shows you both the absolute basics and the absolute galaxy brain stuff in two books.

>>15815305
See >>15815316, >>15810329. You want this condensed into a line-by-line 4chan post so you can pick it apart with greentext and go ACSHUYOOALLY MY STRAWMAN SAYS...

I've already explained this to you several times in this thread, so I'm just giving you my sources: What the Buddha Taught, In the Buddha's Words, and the Heart Sutra. Go read the books. You read the entire Pali Canon in one sitting, this should be a piece of cake for you.

>>15815339
I've already read What the Buddha taught and never got the answer I'm looking for in it, please provide an actual source by citing an actual line from any text that supports your specific interpretation of that question about Madhyamaka and the external world and stop posturing. I don't believe you are right and I think you are deflecting because you don't have a good answer for the contradiction I've pointed out.

>>15815235
This. I remember him, he got BTFO in his own thread by samefagging himself pretending to be an impartial anon who just so happened to read Emptiness Appraised and had an epiphany. You'd think after a few months he would actually read Nagarjuna by now instead of an obscure Buddhist author (ironic) and his anglophonic over-analyzation of madhyamaka.

>>15815372
No, you haven't. It has an entire chapter in it discussing literally this. Even if that weren't the case, go read the Heart Sutra (you could have googled it and read it in the time it took you to respond, it's short).

>>15815372
Not him but madhyamaka has its own literature, you wont get adequate info from introductory books alone.

>>15814772
I've not read the entire thread as it goes super fast, I only want to say something about this point. My biggest achievement in meditation back when I practiced was to reach a point where I felt the thoughts being put in my mind by some kind of invisible agency, so to speak, like popping out of nowhere, but really the best way to explain it is like the weird feeling of some external agency putting things there. It only happened once, and I'm pretty sure it was my biggest achievement in terms of "technique" to trace and slow down thoughts, but the weirdness of the experience made me get back very quickly so it only lasted a few moments. I remember asking back then and some people saying it probably was a dhyana or something close to it, but I'm quite lost in the many definitions.

>>15815316
thanks anon :) i'll check them out