Buddhism is the best religion

Since it's church day, I'll spread some heresy around.

Buddhism is the most accurate and most useful religion. Christianity can't compete, though it's second best overall. Christians have to rely on God for their salvation and generally can't do much on their own besides follow the teachings and be good people. Buddhists can directly, intentionally make themselves into good people, and go far beyond that, either by themselves, with the help of fellow Buddhists, or with the help of deified Buddhas if you're into those kinds of beliefs.

Buddhism solves all your problems and gives you full control and understanding if your mind, which is after all what determines whether you sin or not, and whether you have a good life or not. Why bother with any other religion, or with atheism? Fite me unbelievers

>inb4 you are the worst kind of religious hipster
I don't associate with other Buddhists except online. The religion is good enough to make me put up with being in an easily hateable social group, having people assume I have bad motivations, and not getting to feel good by being part of a more popular group.

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How do I get into Buddhism?

I agree

Very, very carefully so that you don't end up reading someone's bullshit interpretation and get put off the whole thing. This would be a good jumping off point for just verifying how "authentic" whatever you're hearing is:

accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html

Buddhism is a complicated collection of related religions, just like Christianity with all its subsects, and many of the Buddhist ones are incredibly full of shit. If you get into the wrong one it could put you off the whole thing, when there's an incredibly useful and personally verifiable core of ideas in there.

My general advice would be - if it refers directly to the original Pali suttas you're good. East Asian Buddhism (Zen and such) is also good, though it's sort of a different religion really.

What makes this better than any others?

It's directly actionable and will cause immediate improvements in your life in almost any circumstances. What makes it badically unique is that it's a several thousand year old religious tradition where the entire core point is to get your mind into an ideal state of maximal happiness and practical effectiveness at living life. It's not about worshiping anything, or having certain particular dogmas or beliefs. It makes metaphysical claims about cosmology and reincarnation and all that, but you don't have to care about any of that. Just do the exercises, and you'll get the results whether you believe in this or that, or not.

Alright, thanks.

slight emendation, Chan/Zen is the best form of thought and practice because it simultaneously reveres the Buddha, the dharma, and the tradition while also rejecting them so as to drive home the fact that they are, like everything else, contingent and impermanent, and the only thing that can be relied on is seeing life as it is honestly and truly right in front of your face.

Sure.

I've been practicing Buddhism for about a decade now so I can answer any questions about it. Any questions are welcome, especially the "your religion is stupid and shitty" variety. Since we have so many Christians and atheists here, I figured someone would have some criticism.

although for the record Japanese Zen is inferior to Chinese Chan by leagues. it lost the original fierce iconoclastic spirit.

This is the right view and is a part of the original Buddhism as well. The eightfold path is fabricated like everything else, it says that right in the suttas.

My only problem with Chan is that it seems to skip over the part where you actually have some religious ideas in your head to dispose of. Apply it to American atheists and you get American Zen hipsters and their incredible punchability.

Did you do your zazen today? Was it sincere?

Jhana is where it's at bro. Zazen might help you see your mind or whatever, but jhanas let you do it while feeling extreme levels of physical euphoria.

The only practical difference seems to be the idea of focusing your attention on an initial pleasurable semsation like the feeling of smiling, but the difference is extreme.

For beginners, it's very helpful for it not to be a chore but something you actually want to do because it feels good.

I love buddhism and my meditation has been profoundly influenced by it. With that being said, I feel like buddhism on its own lacks a certain devotional element that people need. well at least the theravada/zen schools which are accurate to the original teachings. I guess it could be a remnant of my Christian programming. I need metaphysics so I gravitate towards Vendantic philosophy with notions of Brahman and the like. I prefer the concept of Brahman, God and Fullness rather than emptiness. I guess I cant fully leave some form of theism or Higher Power behind heh.

I wholeheartedly agree that that is a serious problem, and that even back in Tang and Song times there were probably people who came to study already under the illusion that they were under no religious illusions. But in my reading Chan actually seems to stress austerity along with koan / gong'an practice to really stress test the degree a person relies on intellectualizing and made up concepts. It's a great contradiction, because the premise seems really easy to grasp at the outset (which is probably why it attracts so many egos and hipster snobs) but the tradition is built around breaking that all down through harsh criticism (shouting, hitting, insulting, brutalizing, etc.). That's all way in the past, though. Modern Zen in the west is exclusively Japanese and is so namby-pamby. You can actually find videos of white dudes engaging in dharma combat on youtube, and they are so clearly just going through the motions it's pathetic. Like they take it too seriously but don't really get to what it's really about. Not that there's anything wrong with white people obviously, it's just the pathetic way they adopt and revere the culture rather than the actual content of the teaching.

Well, your perspective on your motivations is exactly correct from the Buddhist perspective. The only problem I see is that you have what Buddhists would call a fabricated (and "empty") notion of the concept of emptiness as opposed to fullness.

Are you implicitly associating it with physical space, like a glass being empty or full? With a sensation in your body? Observe that bundle of stuff as the product of yet another made-up conceptual, mental object and you'll see something you didn't see before.

I'm thinking physical euphoria can sometimes be distracting, best to just sit and watch what there is or do my practice. My discipline problems aren't too bad so I can sit at home most days or make it to a centre in my town. I'll be reading up on jhanas though.

I've read that guy's book. Great stuff.

Indeed it is! There are four standard "levels" of jhanas, which are just based on which mental factors are still present in each one. The first jhana is associated with physical euphoria, but by the time you get to the fourth jhana it's much more like an idealized notion of zazen.

The purpose of the euphoria is that it's simply easier to think, and also to stay still and not mentally "squirm" when you're feeling good. Pleasant feelings naturally attract and hold your attention.

It's so fascinating that the several Buddhisms are the really the only traditions that overwhelmingly emphasize the unreality of things and concepts. It amazes me how the contradiction (not in a negative sense) can persist in Buddhism that people believe in hells, heavens, merit, gods, and magic powers, while at the same time fully accepting that these are all illusory and not ultimately real (empty). I'm a translator of Chan texts btw and sorry if my writing is a little too Sup Forums inflected right now, usually I would be more measured in speech.

There's plenty of devotional elements in zen imo. Thinking of recitations especially.

Through the day Kanzeon—
through the night Kanzeon.

how's this for a devotion - if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Or, if it's cold, burn the Buddha's relics. Or, the Buddha was a dried up shit-stick (a stick used for scraping shit off your ass in the monastery outhouse).

buddhism is just a will to nothingness

Yeah ok I'm all for killing buddhas dude. I'm just saying that there is this element too, in Zen atleast.

false. do you have the balls to admit your ignorance and that you are stating a preconception with no sincere attempt to understand?

What would you say to someone telling you that your religion is stupid and shitty?

you're right, there absolutely is.

Buddhism is for poor slant eye faggots and fart sniffing Westerners lacking substance Just be an atheist..

>Very, very carefully so that you don't end up reading someone's bullshit interpretation and get put off the whole thing.
sounds like every religion ever

If you're a translator of Chan texts, can you help me understand what people actually do with something like the Mumonkan? It reads to me as a collection of rather Sup Forums esque Chinese memes that are incomprehensible unless you're familiar with the actual culture in the monasteries at the time. Is there anyone still familiar with that culture enough to understand what they're getting at in a no-bullshit way?

I'd say Le Pen will lose and there will never be another Charles Martel, so at least his religion won't be extinct in 20 years.

it's not a preconception, it's the truth. nibbana is existential suicide. release from becoming, into nothingness

I'd try to figure out their motivation for saying it and try to cause enough interest for them to have a closer look at the religion. It pretty much sells itself once you get past the massive cloud of bullshit that surrounds it.

This is a view of some schools, but it's not universal. I don't agree with it really.

In any case, Buddhism isn't a will to nothing - it's not a will to anything. Seeing your will as it is, produced by causal factors that are themselves under your control, is much of the point. If you don't see that and find yourself willing for nothingness, that's a problem that's specifically identified and addressed in the suttas.

How does one even go about getting past the bullshit could?
I don't mind spirituality or meditation, I think it's a fine way to find focus, but with all the Hollywood shit and new age crystals fuckery, it's hard to even know what the fuck buddhism is even about.

It's extremely difficult, actually impossible, to really translate any Chan texts within the parameters of modern institutional translation expectations. You can do it, but if you want to translate semi-directly you have to include so many notes and explanations that the reading process is fundamentally changed and it becomes more like an experience of academic study than of learning about yourself and your environment. There are some people who make very liberal translations that attempt to keep the "feeling" or "wavelength" of how the original would have resonated with contemporary Chinese readers, but usually those people don't know the original language well and so they don't succeed. In my opinion, a lot of the appeal does come from that "eastern mystique" which is a problem since the intent of the material is to cut through all that. There certainly are
......
shit sorry i have a bunch of distractions here

>Christians have to rely on God for their salvation
You can't save yourself. No man can. Buddhism can't save you. Only Jesus can save you.
>(Also Buddha is burning in hell because of his disbelief in God)

Trudeau is a buddisth

If your enemies kill you, you win.

You just have to use your own judgment, like with bullshit clouds around any other topic. The only thing that's required is to notice when something sounds like bullshit and stop reading or listening, and to give the benefit of the doubt that in Buddhism there actually is a core of concepts that is quite rational and empirical, and you just have to dig it out for yourself.

If you read a few of the Pali suttas, some will seem very mystical, but a lot of them are extremely dry and technical, and excruciatingly precise with their language and use of concepts and vocabulary. That should be your sign that there might really be something there.

I've never met a Buddhist who wasn't borderline retarded by emotional issues. It seems the premise of dopey bent left women and beta males who are too emasculated to even step inside a church. Outside of Asia it seems retarded.

>it's not a will to anything
then why practice? the goal is freedom from suffering, but existence will always have suffering, so to be free from suffering you leave samsara. so it ultimately IS a will to nothingness, because that's the end of suffering.

but yeah, i know that having a will to nothingness is a problem as a buddhist, because having any will at all gets in the way of wanting nothing at all, if you get what i mean

If you say so. I'm not looking to convert Christians, the whole "apostasy = hell" thing makes that pretty tough.
Yes. Don't talk to western Buddhists, simole as that. I'm a western Buddhist and I don't talk to western Buddhists. The actual set of ideas themselves don't really depend on your physical location or the presence of a non-retarded community near you. With the internet, it's pretty much a non-problem.

Buddhism ultimately fails because it cannot account for the existence of absolute good and evil. Everyone is a Buddha, or on the road to buddhahood, and they're just doing bad things because of temporary mental obscurations and attachments, that sounds great but do you really think that about a man who is raping a 3 year old? Thus ended my love affair with buddhism.

He is a well indoctrinated Papist actually. Jesuit trained like Trump. The Jesuits hate the Buddha Khan. Spain, you went and inbred yourself into irrelevance.

The temples are tranquil af too

Enjoy being reincarnated into cold hell and descending successively through each of the levels

(just kidding - but Buddhism is stupid. You'll never free yourself from Samsara unless you repent and turn to Christ. In fact, you'll be caught in a state of eternal suffering - especially as you try to figure out "how did this happen? Self is delusion!")

Not everything is suffering. There's just suffering mixed in there all the time, due to your limbic system's craving and aversion, and lack of the direct experience of just seeing what happens in your mind by simple cause and effect.

The cause-and-effect associations just don't get made unless you actively make them, even though you're constantly flooded by data from which you could, in principle, draw useful conclusions if you paid attention.

Lose the will and craving, and you continue to function just fine, even better in fact, still feel all the good stuff, and never run into anything that can actually make you suffer anymore. This is a strong claim that's not at all obvious, but you just have to experiment and see for yourself.

>"metta"
>actual meditation

You're playing in the kiddie pool.

>great but do you really think that about a man who is raping a 3 year old?
Yes. If you think otherwise, I think that's just your own ordinary outrage and desire to punish someone, not a sign of some kind of platonic good and evil.

>existence of absolute good and evil.

Oh dear. Still reading babby-tier theological drivel?

Christ doesn't promise to free you from samsara. ;)
Metta is a reliable way to generate the positive feelings needed for the jhanas.

What particular (few, best) Chan texts and translations would you recommend?

One thing I don't understand about Buddhism (or Stoicism, which I'm more familiar with an I believe is superficially similar) is why asceticism is necessary. Possessions and pleasures are not NECESSARY in life no, but why go so far as to say they are forbidden? Isn't someone who's followed a philosophy that recognises the tragic nature of life and has learnt to cope with and overcome suffering and loss best placed to have possessions and passions (as a "bonus" to their grounded self), since they're the best people at coping with when they inevitably lose or are unable to acquire such things?

When I think of the monk in the temple, never having known drink or women, I think isn't that an avoidance of reality rather than a confrontation of it? Isn't avoiding suffering in the first place antithetical to learning to cope with suffering?

Can you not be grounded, even "enlightened", and have pleasures and possessions as a "plus"?

Almost all religions posit good and evil. Buddhism would be the outlier here. You don't think good and evil actually exist?

I'm not saying a religion has to be based on good and evil, but the Buddhist universe cannot account for the existence of evil, therefore it is ultimately a failed but useful model.

So you don't think good and evil exist?

her mouth played with my cock -
the way a cloud plays with the sky

Good thread, internet sangha bro. I took my precepts a couple months back and they wound up incorporating global warming into it. Western Buddhists really are turbofaggots sometimes.

Asceticism is not necessary, and is in fact not a core Buddhist practice at all. Lay Buddhists can achieve everything a monk can achieve. Monks are just ascetics because their lifestyle is to go around begging food from poor people and not do anything useful besides teaching their practices. If it were any different, I doubt Buddhism cound have survived to today.

As for "enlightenment plus", the key thing is that you have to be enlightened or not, there's no middle ground or being "a little" enlightened. If you don't meditate, you don't see what's going on in your head. You don't build that mental muscle memory of "oh it's this mental object again. it was caused by this other thing two minutes ago, it feels like this in my body, and like that mentally, and if I let it run its course the effect will be as follows, just like last time. what do?" Intellectual understanding is like reading about bicycling without ever actually getting on a bike and learning to ride.

RUTH SASAKI - RECORD OF LINJI (Linji Yixuan) [this is the absolute most supreme Zen book available]

Cleary - Book of Serenity (Hongzhi Zhengjue)
Urs App - Gate of Clouds (Yunmen Wenyan)
John Blofeld - Zen Teaching of Huang Po (Huangbo Xiyun)
Red Pine - Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

The Blue Cliff Record (Cleary) and the Wumenguan/Mumonkan (in Blyth's 5 part series) are required!

But start with Yunmen, Huangbo, Linji.

>Buddhism solves all your problems

Don't know about that.

It definitely gives you a lot more awareness of the root of them, though.

Buddhism requires a complete honesty with yourself though. Totally and completely, naked and laughing.

It also has no corrupted imagery, though the Chinese are working on that.

Buddhism accounts for evil just fine. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it doesn't. The Buddhist view is that evil results from ignorance, craving, and ill will, which causes actions that harm yourself and others.

No, I don't think that. See

Ugh. Tell them not to corrupt and contaminate the dharma with teachings that are not part of the dharma.

Greed.

ALL suffering roots to desire.

Thanks!

>Christ doesn't promise to free you from samsara. ;)
(neither does Buddhism)

repent. You are an eternal soul. You will never cease. You have invented cunning ways of avoiding the Truth of God.

Turn to Christ and repent. God desires relationship with you. But there is no escape from samsara. There is an end to suffering if you will confess and allow the Holy Spirit to transform you.

Well, I should have said, the goal of supreme enlightenment in Buddhism purportedly solves all your problems. I have yet to have all my problems solved, but so far the particularly bad ones really have dissolved in a very satisfying way.

If people could pick up mindful awareness, I don't care how corrupted the doctrine is.

I may regret those words in time, but that is how I feel.

I don't have faith in Christian dogma, but I have enough faith in the idea of it to believe that Christ would never abandon me if it happens that I'm wrong. YMMV

>I have yet to have all my problems solved

You know the millisecond when you orgasm, or when you begin to lose your train of thought?

When you just ARE?

That's the best way to describe how enlightenment feels.

I wouldn't say it "solves" your problems, because your "problems" themselves cease to exist.

You must open your heart and mind to the Truth of God. You have sinned. You have transgressed the decree of the Eternal God. You have sinned against the omnipotent, perfect God. You justly deserve Hell, just as I do.

Through Christ Jesus, God can legally dismiss your case if you will accept His payment.

Buddha was a breeder Jesus wasn't therefore fuck Buddha

Sorry, I don't accept that anyone who would characterize themselves as still having any problems (or suffering) of any sort as fully enlightened. That is, the consciousness of "this kind of sucks, I don't like it", as opposed to eg physical pain.

I know the Zen crowd would vehemently disagree with me on this, but I think it's pure semantics around what you specifically mean by "enlightened".

>To live is to sin

So we're on the same page.

The only real difference between you and I, is that you see this sin as consequence of judgement of a deity, and not self-inflicted.

Chan isn't iconoclast exactly, not like "western" iconoclasm at least where they actively destroy things and ban them.

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I think its just difficult for a Westerner to understand initially, its a very different mode of thought many of us are not used to.

as I've investigated more I've found it much easier to reach that same level of 'devotion' without the accompanying empty ritual of other faiths.

How much is salvageable from Buddhism as a philosophy without having to subscribe to the religious claims (i.e. reincarnation)?

Wtf I hate my material possessions now

It's kind of the same at my centre but it's kept outside of the formal part and most people are just there to practice. A finnish guy holds really ace dharma talks tho.

Sounds to me like a big old case of "if you'd just believe what I'm saying to you, then you will believe what I'm saying to you". :)

I'm well aware that I've sinned many times (by the Christian definition of sin), and I'm working to do better. If that's not enough, it's not enough. We all have to make our own choices, and if your notion of God is someone who hides and plays peekaboo and has a notion of justice in which failing to spot him is punishable by eternal hell, I reserve the right to say "haha ok bro" and move on.

All of it actually you just drop all the religious context I suggest Zen Buddhism

>ending suffering
this is why Christianity is life denying
and why Buddhism is not (despite Nietzsche's misunderstanding of it)

it does not deny suffering or seek to escape it, but rather embrace it head on so it can be overcome.
you cannot reach the peak of the mountain without an arduous climb

likewise making the same climb more difficult for yourself on purpose as some sort of masochistic "test" ultimately achieves nothing either and hampers your growth, which is the issue with hardline asceticism.

Nothing as a philosophy, everything as an actual practice that you actually practice. Forget the reincarnation stuff, and just pay attention to your mind and DO THE EXERCISES. You'll get the results as promised.

>I reserve the right to say "haha ok bro" and move on.
Yes of course you have that right, in the same way that somebody has the right to commit murder.

You will be punished severely. You are not sinning against the president, you are not sinning against a king, you are sinning against Almighty GOD. His judgment is righteous. It is a fearsome and terrible thing to fall into the hands of the God of the universe.

>That is, the consciousness of "this kind of sucks, I don't like it"

That's precisely my point.

Suffering is not a problem, it is a consequence. It molds you just as much as the "good" does. They are both consequences.

You have to appreciate the bad as well as the good to find the middle way.

It's why monks laugh when a mandala gets blown over by a child, for instance.

be sure its Chinese Zen/Chan
Japanese Zen may look cool but it lost a lot of the ideals of the Chinese

also read about Taoism since its closely connected.

But how is sitting in a monastery, never meeting women or having children anything but escaping from suffering?

Why not just meditate and see what happens, recite and see what happens, e.t.c. What is 'subscribing' anyway?

THIS
Day of rake postponed indefinitely

I know you believe this very strongly, but let me suggest that your approach is flawed. You're surely self-aware enough to see how insane the words you're using sound to someone who's not in a choir you're preaching to. If you want to convert, start by getting inside their head a little.

+1. for Zen, also Taoism and Tai Chi Chuan

Christianity is Truth, characterize it how you'd like. Christ has died for our sins.

We are all sinners, we have disobeyed the righteous command of Holy God. God can do with us what He pleases. Who are we to talk back to God? Who are we to question His righteous judgment? He is all-powerful. His infinite and terrifying might cannot be contended with.

So what if you have been made to be vessels of God's wrath? I say this as a warning. You will face the infinite wrath of God which cannot be bourn by any mortal being.

Your meditation and attempts to annihilate the self are no match for the incomprehensible power of GOD ALMIGHTY. You will not be released from samsara - you will bear the full weight of your punishment. And since you have sinned against the Infinite, Perfect, and Holy, your punishment will be infinite, perfect, and holy.

Repent and turn to Christ.

Yup it's true Japanese Zen kind of drops the ball a little bit look into the Chines version and you can look into Taoism as well which if you kick out the silly as rituals and focus on the philosophy is also not terrible

Question for you all.

What would your imaginary masters do about Islam?

Would they cheer the destruction of your history, monuments and people?

Dude they routinely say things like "the Buddha was an addleheaded bald negroid, a fly-covered piece of dogshit." If that's standard in a "Buddhist" tradition then it is iconoclasm.

only monks choose to do that, and in Asia at least, people either become monks for a short time as young men before leaving, or otherwise when they are old and "retired" from the world
not to mention there were women in the temples and it was up to the master to decide if his monks were chaste or not.

that being said as a layman you can still practice, in the West we have no monastic tradition so Western Buddhism is developing sort of as a cross between monastic practice and layman's practice.

I recommend taking everything from the East at face value, not that it isn't important or wise, but as a westerner we can't adopt "eastern" cultural ideas in practicing Buddhism else it becomes a farce.

for myself at least I try to model my own actions along "classical" Hellenic/Roman lines while keeping the ideas and practice of the east in mind.

Buddhism is far closer to the Classical ideal than Christianity is, and to me at least feels like the natural conclusion of pagan-european thought, or at least where they seemed to be headed.

Wrong. Salvation comes through faith in jesus and allows us to exist in sin. Nothing in buddhism saves your soul.

So if getting by in this life/and next/ad infinitum is the only worry you have I can see how you think buddhism might be for you.

I'd rather have my soul saved for eternity however.

I think you're almost right, but you're letting some new agey stuff mix in here. You don't have to appreciate anything, be molded, or change in any way. Get rid of the part of you that wants the benefits of being molded, and the part of you that wants to overcome suffering and grow. You'll find you didn't need them, the molding and growing will happen anyway, but really you're better off just pretending it won't.

>Nothing in buddhism saves your soul.

I saved my own soul.

Jesus was not required.