/lit/ - Literature

>>22827021
please do something with your mind beyond images of buzzwords, it's degrading to both yourself and this board

>>22827021
Buddhism thinks that american born rich and handsome white males have the most worthy souls of any people on earth, of course it's based

>>22827039
What is the intelligent way to say something is based?

>>22827042
Steadfastly holding a derisive opinion.

>>22827051
Is this girl British? Are all British girls this flat?

>>22827039
Jesus Christ, go to church and have a laugh, you unbearable faggot.

>>22827075
No, most are fat.

The first Buddhists don't seem to have been very different to the guy left of the picrel, but Western 'buddhist' bugmen can only cope and seethe.
Buddhism, its defeat; present-day India.
Pgs. 209
We had arrived at a time which, according to the Sinhalese computation, would be consistent with the VII century B.C. (1), and according to other Buddhistic calculations, drawn up for northern India, until 543 BC (2). For some time now, very strong ideas had crept into this branch of Hindu science called sankhya philosophy. Two Brahmins, Patandjali and Kapila, had taught that the works ordered by the Vedas were useless in the perfection of creatures, and that, in order to arrive at higher existences, the practice of an individual and arbitrary asceticism was sufficient. By [...]
Pgs. 210
[...] this doctrine, one was entitled, without prejudice to the future of the tomb, to despise everything that Brahmanism recommended and to do what it forbade (1). Such a theory could overthrow society. However, since it presented itself only in a purely scientific form and was only used in schools, it remained a major discussion for scholars and did not descend into politics. But, whether the ideas that gave birth to it were something more than the accidental discovery of a researchful mind, or whether very practical men were aware of them, it turned out that a young prince, of the most illustrious origin, belonging to a branch of the solar race, Sakya, son of Cuddodhana, king of Kapilavastu, set out to introduce people to what this doctrine had of LIBERAL.
He began to teach, like Kapila, that the Vedic works were worthless; he added that it was not through liturgical readings, austeritys and tortures, or through classifications, that it was possible to free oneself from the obstacles of present existence; that, for this, it was necessary to resort only to the observance of moral laws, in which [...]

>>22827079
Mon Dieu ! That's enough fish and chips for you.

idk, but how is this related to literature?

>>22827082
Cope

>>22827084
Is any thread related to literature?

>>22827021
GET THIS CRAP OUTTA HERE!

>>22827084
its tangentially related to Hesse and Schopenhauer you dilettante

>>22827021
Buddhism is based as long as you use it to actually live life and do something. By which I mean, the chief idea behind Buddhism, to me, has always seemed like it's about removing death-anxiety; ideally, all anxiety, but most anxiety stems from death-anxiety at the root. Just kind of teaches you to calmly accept your inevitable death and the essential meaninglessness behind life so you stop freaking out over bullshit.
The problem is ppl walk away from that thinking it sounds like a "just give up" mentality, but it's not. The idea is once you chill out, the worlds your oyster. Accepting meaninglessness means the mental freedom to live life in a way that is meaningful. Accepting death means better enabling yourself to live fully.
I don't think the point of Buddhism is to sit around meditating all day. Just my take away from it

>>22827086
So Buddhists only knew to spread their religion with the sword? Pathetic. The brahmins would go into the jungle, sometimes aided by assistants, most times alone, to build a hermitage and live there reading the vedas and meditating. The savage would show up, he could kill him, like a God almost, the Brahmin would stay in his meditative pose as his intestines and blood fell out of his body. For one dead Brahmin, ten ran to the hermitage and disputed themselves the place for the next Brahmin to continue the mission.
Once again, Hinduism wins against Buddhism.

>>22827112
You will never be a real brahmin

>>22827114
Buddhism is slave morality. Hinduism is master morality.

>>22827116
Okay wannabe dindu

>>22827097
Hesse was a retard

>>22827120
Go on, keep practicing an empty and arbitrary asceticism and despise everything that actual religion teaches with that entitled despise proper to all Buddhists.

How can I learn Vajrayana on my own? There are no teachers where I live

BUDDHISM IS EVIL
https://qz.com/india/586192/theres-a-misogynist-aspect-of-buddhism-that-nobody-talks-about

Hinduism is patriarchal. No doubt about it. So are Christianity and Islam, Sikhism and Shinto, Jainism and Judaism. But Buddhism? It is not the first religion that comes to mind when we talk about misogyny.

The assumption is that Buddhism is rational, modern, agnostic, and liberal in matters of gender and sexuality. Book after book has conditioned us to see the celibate and chaste Buddha as a kind of androgynous, asexual, gentle sage with a beatific smile. Yet, some of the earliest and most systematic documentation of rejection of female sexuality in Indian literature is from Buddhist scriptures, especially the rules of monastic discipline (Vinaya Pitaka), traditionally attributed to the Buddha himself.

>>22827153
The complete silence on the subject of misogyny so firmly entrenched in the Buddhist scriptures, and traced to the Buddha, is quite remarkable. Research on this topic is well known but restricted to academic circles. There is Buddhism after Patriarchyby Rita Gross and Bull of a Man’ by John Powers, for example. But there is a strong desire in these books to explain away the patriarchy, rather than put the spotlight on them. It is almost as if the scholars are irritated, even embarrassed, that the facts interfere with contemporary perceptions of the Buddha.

Abandoning sex, which effectively means abandoning women, for a “higher” purpose—be it enlightenment or spirituality or service to the nation—has since become a popular model, embraced by religious sects, as well political organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It has been glamorised and valorised as the ultimate indicator of masculinity and purity. We can trace, at least one major tributary of this idea, to the Vinaya Pitaka of the Buddha, who abandoned his wife, without her consent.

>>22827153
"Rejecting female sexuality" isn't misogyny, it's just using your brain and making sense. It also isn't "rejecting" it, its understanding it. Every religion and code of the past acknowledged that women's sexuality is irrational and out of control and must be subordinated to a marriage for there to be any beauty or order in the world. Same goes for men, but men have less opportunity to cause mischief sexually.
So all you're telling me is Buddhism follows the same trend as every other system of ideas from back when men weren't fucked up the ass via political correctness and actually used their brains to observe their world honestly and write about it without fear of a buttfucking from an HR department.
Wowww bro my mind is fucken bl0wn

NO BUDHDA YOU CAN"T SAY THAT


Numbered Discourses 1.1–10

The Chapter on What Occupies the Mind
1

So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. There the Buddha addressed the mendicants, “Mendicants!”

“Venerable sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

“Mendicants, I do not see a single sight that occupies a man’s mind like the sight of a woman. The sight of a woman occupies a man’s mind.”

2

“Mendicants, I do not see a single sound that occupies a man’s mind like the sound of a woman. The sound of a woman occupies a man’s mind.”

3

“Mendicants, I do not see a single smell that occupies a man’s mind like the smell of a woman. The smell of a woman occupies a man’s mind.”

4

“Mendicants, I do not see a single taste that occupies a man’s mind like the taste of a woman. The taste of a woman occupies a man’s mind.”

5

“Mendicants, I do not see a single touch that occupies a man’s mind like the touch of a woman. The touch of a woman occupies a man’s mind.”

6

“Mendicants, I do not see a single sight that occupies a woman’s mind like the sight of a man. The sight of a man occupies a woman’s mind.”

7

“Mendicants, I do not see a single sound that occupies a woman’s mind like the sound of a man. The sound of a man occupies a woman’s mind.”

8

“Mendicants, I do not see a single smell that occupies a woman’s mind like the smell of a man. The smell of a man occupies a woman’s mind.”

9

“Mendicants, I do not see a single taste that occupies a woman’s mind like the taste of a man. The taste of a man occupies a woman’s mind.”

10

“Mendicants, I do not see a single touch that occupies a woman’s mind like the touch of a man. The touch of a man occupies a woman’s mind.”

>>22827116
But you just acknowledged that Buddhists were kicking people's asses and shit, so who's the slave moralist exactly?

>>22827153
>>22827157
Why do you care? You're not even a woman lmfao.

>>22827157
>the Buddha, who abandoned his wife, without her consent.
it's called no-fault divorce and is the norm in feminist, sex-positive countries

>>22827021
>Is x le based
>Is y le cringe
Is based based upon the basedness of based.

>>22827021
they didn't start with the Jeets, they started with Californians... even if you are more interested in Tibetan, Japanese, Thai etc. you start with the Indian literature

>>22827223
You know, "without her consent" implies a modicum of necessary etiquette, dumb faggot.

>>22827235
sorry your dad left you rahul

Vajrayna is buddhism mixed with sex, which is why women and atheists are drawn to it.

>>22827021
Incredibly retarded post. How do you think meat ends up on your table?

>>22827076
mad?

>>22827101
>The idea is once you chill out, the worlds your oyster. Accepting meaninglessness means the mental freedom to live life in a way that is meaningful.
Well one problem is Westerners rarely do that when they "give up". They tend to instead indulge in their worst hedonism and nihilistic prey on other people to see what happens

>>22827120
>avoids nihilisim
lmao, even
>Gods as your best bro
Why are buddhafags constantly seething about them then?
>scriptures and doctrine make sense
except the part about how parinirvana purportedly isn’t an annihilation if the aggregates are wiped out and there is nothing about us that continues in parinirvana
>cant be attacked by atheism
Buddhism employs the same arguments and appeals to reddit-tier empiricism when its not inconsistently talking about supernatural stuff like karma, but you can flip the script and reject all the claims of Buddhism about anicca, karma, rebirth, anatta as unfounded metaphysical claims just as an atheist rejects theism, and there is nothing that Buddhism can do since it cant prove those things as true.
>Inner peace
not /lit/ Buddhists, kek, anyway every religion has this
>realistic
Its’s really not, it presupposes that a rationally-ordered universe exists randomly for no reason and that things like karma tabulate one’s actions and so on for no reason why is logically absurd.
>true enlightenment
kek
>proven by scientific research
It’s dogmas are unproven, and the meditative and prayer of every religion have been studied and shown to have a measurable effect/benefit. The idea that this is uniquely true of Buddhism is myth pushed by modernists, its been debunked by Evan Thompson in “Why Im Not a Buddhist”
>Pure Indo-Aryan Religion
It’s one step removed from the actual pure Indo-Aryan religion, Hinduism

>>22827585
>but you can flip the script and reject all the claims of Buddhism about anicca, karma, rebirth, anatta as unfounded metaphysical claims just as an atheist rejects theism,
you can't reject empirical facts

>>22827639
>you can't reject empirical facts
It's a laughable myth that is pushed by confused and idiotic modernists who either intentionally or unintentionally assimilated the talking points of "California Buddhism" that any of those can be considered empirical. None of them can be empirically verified so they aren't "empirical facts".

>>22827654
>>22827639
Here’s a run-down of why none of those Buddhist DOGMAS are actually empirical and why they can easily be denied.

>anicca
This is specifically “universal impermanence”, but having the empirical experience of witnessing something being impermanent in your firsthand experience is not an empirical experience of “universal impermanence” because that experience isn’t encompassing everything in the universe, so it’s impossible to empirically verify anicca because you can never verify that the entire universe is actually impermanent because you have no empirical access to 99.99999+% of the universe.

>karma
Buddha talks about karma mainly in the context of it affecting future lives and karma from past lives affecting this one. It’s impossible for us to empirically verify this. I’ve seen Buddhists try to respond with the laughable cope that you can verify karma in your experience of one mind-moment causing another, but this isn’t the main type of karma that Buddha talks about so that’s just an unsuccessful cop-out; the type of karma that Buddha talks about as affecting future lives after death is not subject to any sort of empirical verification.

>rebirth
Same as above, it cannot be empirically verified at all, similarly some braindead Buddhists will cope about how you can verify rebirth from “moment to moment” (but they cant explain how you can actually verify this because its not even true) but this is another goal-shifting cop-out because EVEN IF that were true (its not) it’s still not an empirical verification of the kind of rebirth that Buddha mainly talks about, i.e. from one body to another after one dies.

>Anatta
It’s impossible to empirically verify the non-existence of a Atman by examining various mental states and objects and declaring them to be non-Self because the Atman is never an object of itself to begin with and so nothing about objective phenomena directly shows the existence or non-existence of Atman, so what the Buddhist is doing is like looking underwater for fire and saying “fire doesn’t exist because I don’t see it under water”.

>>22827697
karma and rebirth are not the monopoly of Buddhism
and you can verify for yourself whether they are true or not with meditation

>>22827585
>It’s one step removed from the actual pure Indo-Aryan religion, Hinduism
Explain

>>22827712
>and you can verify for yourself whether they are true or not with meditation
That’s not true, what you are saying is a laughable cop-out answer that is giving rebirth and karma a different meaning from what Buddha talks about. It’s impossible to empirically verify in meditation that karma and rebirth have any connection with past or future lives, because we don’t have any reliable way of gaining epistemic access to past or future lives, through meditation or otherwise.

Stop lying to yourself and engaging in blatant goal-post shifting. Stop embarrassing yourself with the lie that we can empirically verify supernatural things that Buddha taught by giving them some alternative non-supernatural interpretation that is not what he was talking about.

>>22827697
I think the point with anicca is that nothing you can observe lasts so there's no need to assume there's some unobserved substance that somehow lasts.
As for anatta can you elaborate on how Atman is not an object of itself? I don't understand this, it seems somewhat similar to some Mahayana concepts like the luminous mind though

Anons, I need some guidance
I feel more pulled to the Theravada view of spiritual attainment in general (arahantship vs. the bodhisattva vow etc) but I am interested in the emphasis placed on Sunyata, as well as some Mahayana (Vajrayana especially) meditative practices.
How should I proceed?
Also, do Theravadins consider Mahayana metaphysics/cosmology to be generally correct (like the Avatamsaka sutra's worlds for example)?

>>22827723
>Explain
Hinduism was the religion of the Indo-Aryans who composed the Vedas and Upanishads, Hinduism and the Vedas and Upanishads predates Buddhism. Practically all of the beliefs and doctrines of Buddhism including rebirth, karma, liberation, the 3 marks of existence etc all appear in Hindu texts like the Upanishads before Buddha even lived.

Buddha largely copied or kept intact all these beliefs in his own teachings while adding his own unique spin to things, so Buddhism is like one step removed from an Indo-Aryan religion.

>>22827752
>adding his own unique spin to things
What did he add? Since the marks of existence appear in hindu texts too apparently

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tripiṭaka_tablets_at_Kuthodaw_Pagoda

BUDDHIST BROS WE HAVE THE LONGEST BOOK EVER

>>22827755
>What did he add?
The Brihadaranayaka Upanishad (8th-7th century BC) already applies anicca, anatta and dukkha to all saṅkhārās or conditioned things but not to the Unconditioned (Brahman), similarly in the Pali Canon anicca and dukkha are applied only to saṅkhārās and are not spoken of in relation to the Unconditioned.

Where Buddha differs on the three marks is applying anatta to the Unconditioned by saying that it applies to all dharmatas whether conditioned (the saṅkhārās) or unconditioned (Nirvana), i.e. he says that Nirvana is non-self.

It's unclear what exactly this is supposed to entail however, as the Upanishads and Hindus would agree that the Absolute Brahman is not any sort of individual personal egoistic self either, and in much of later Buddhism in Tibetan schools and Ch'an you have different schools identifying the Absolute as being identical with one's true being or as being identical with the true nature of one's mind etc which in practice is saying basically the same thing as it is one's self (i.e. that it is what one really is)

There are further differences such as that Buddha denied that there was some singular God who is responsible for the creation of samsara but the above point is the major difference viz. the 3 marks. Buddha also taught specific meditations but these aren't a real "doctrinal" difference as the Upanishads and Jains were already talking about various kinds of meditation and methods of self-control as well.

>>22827736
>I think the point with anicca is that nothing you can observe lasts so there's no need to assume there's some unobserved substance that somehow lasts.
Yes, I know, what I am pointing out is that “concluding that there is no need or logical necessity to assume there is an Atman” has nothing to do whatsoever with the “empirical verification” of anatta. There is a large amount of sloppy thinking and the misuse of language by Buddhists that I encounter both online and in books and I think everyone both Buddhist and non-Buddhists would be better off if it was stopped; and one such example of abusing language and ignoring the actual meaning of words is pretending or implying that making a logical argument to defend dispensing with the acceptance of a hypothetical notion (not empirical) is the same as the empirical verification of that hypothetical notion’s non-existence. I’m not accusing you of saying this but I’ve seen others claim that.

>>22827736
>As for anatta can you elaborate on how Atman is not an object of itself? I don't understand this, it seems somewhat similar to some Mahayana concepts like the luminous mind though
The Upanishads present the Atman as being an immediate and partless self-luminous awareness that transcends the subject-object distinction. In how Advaita Vedanta explains the Atman model of the Upanishads for example, they say that all cognitive acts and mental knowledge presuppose a luminous “space” of awareness in which they occur, and the status of thoughts and sensory-perceptions in relation to that space is roughly analogous to objects floating in 3D space without affecting it. Normal empirical experience is combination of this boundless unconditioned space having “auto-awareness” of itself in conjunction with all layers of mental and physical sensation being overlaid on top of that auto-awareness. The awareness is not a subject opposed to an object, but its partless, unconditioned and undifferentiated and it transcends the subject-object dichotomy, the subject-object split happens when the intellect, which is one of the layers laid over this space of awareness, mistakenly appropriates the un-individualized “I am” of the unconditioned awareness to itself and thinks it is an individual conscious subject. The Atman is thus never observable as an object because it is the stainless pure unobjectifiable light that is providing the ground or space for subject-object distinctions to occur, and so any object, thought, or sensations seen or known by the mind in meditation, introspection, or with any other method is just going to be another insentient mental phenomena being revealed by the light of the Self, and it wont be the Self itself.

Yogachara epistemology also proposes that awareness is self-knowing/self-luminous, but in a totally different way from Vedanta because they assign the self-knowing to individual thoughts or mind-moments which have their own auto-awareness of themselves for the moment that they arise (Vedanta disagrees with and criticizes this). There isn’t anything like the Advaita Vedanta model of awareness until much later in Buddhist thought in some Buddhist Tantras, The Kalachakra Texts and some Ch’an texts that speak about very similar ideas in a few places; but the classic Indian Buddhist schools don’t have any analogous position or doctrine to this.