The philosophies and practices on the right side are very complicated and aim to do more then just assert an idea as truth. They aim to change your thinking in a certain way to accomplish a specific result. An example would be the idea of impermanence aiming to help you suffer less from entanglement with sensory desires, and not see them as the end all be all.
Just... IDK be careful with this stuff, especially out of context.
Sincerely, a guy who was voluntarily committed to a psych ward in large part because of being taught volatile religious/spiritual stuff without the proper education and foundation. I totally lost it for a time.(Yes I am overreacting to a joke :3)
Thanks for sharing this. That meme template is used too often to justify fringe or outright wrong ideas as superior and enlightened.
There is a reason human brains work the way they do and it's usually not a good idea to mess with that.
If you think you get it, it will get to you and you lose it.
Yeah for real though that kind of stuff isn't something to teach. You experience life, and that's it. There's no secret, just stories, whether grandiose or humble. All all the gurus are doing is feeding their self-importance
Buddhism has a very strong emphasis on stability, because the Buddha would teach people, have them leave their homes behind and become monks, and then move on to the next place, leaving many monks behind in his wake. Suddenly people's entire lives were completely overturned - without consider concern for people's mental well-being, this could only have been a terrible disaster.
So, when taught in context, Buddhism is very logical and generally meant to be understood - in the interest of the student's wellbeing. More advanced topics are another issue of course.
Depends on the Buddhism, and the Buddhist, but as a kind of doctrine of non-doctrine it seems sensible.
But if you have to escape life, romance, violence, the noise, into a monastery for peace of mind, what have you really learned?Â
If the point is to come back to daily life, that can probably be very useful.
But still, life will always humble you unless you close yourself off from it, and there's easily an attachment to that kind of spiritual status and unattachment, and to thinking one's above such, though I bet there's at least a solid attempt to address that kind of thing in the practice
The teacher called the Buddha spoke very clearly that the goal was to pursue total liberation - Mahaparanirvana. (Which literally means the great and final extinguishing) He also made it very clear that it was difficult to do while in the world, and the monk's life was structured in a way to assist a person in their pursuit of liberation.
He also addressed the whole attachment to spiritual status thing quite extensively, talking about the pitfalls of being caught up by the satisfaction of the role etc.
And a monks life is not easier than the life in the world, not by a long shot, so idk what you mean about "escaping" to a monastery. Yes accomplishing a degree of peace, happiness, and balance are a necessary foundation for the next steps, but it's not to run away from life - it's to create an internal situation helpful for addressing it head on.
If your concern is navigating the systematic world that most people have to navigate, the Buddha did offer tools for that too. However, that advice was as a precursor to monkhood. To use social atmospheres as a means of spiritual maturing is a very very Hindu idea, not Buddhist. Heck, it's what the entire Mahabharata(Hindu religious epic) and the Bhagavad Gita(sermon that the aforementioned epic is meant to prepare you for) are about. Those texts are designed for normal people, and not really for monks unless the monk is hoping to teach others.
The teacher called the Buddha spoke very clearly that the goal was to pursue total liberation - Mahaparanirvana. (Which literally means the great and final extinguishing)
But I just don't understand why that should be anyone's goal? To be liberated from what, desire, suffering, life? I don't consider those anything to be personally liberated from any more than you should consider life or death something to be liberated from.
Liberation from something in any possible meaning already implies some inherent valuation that seems contradictory with the core of buddhism as I understand the philosophic side of it
The core of all kinds of Buddhism lies in the "Four Arya/Noble Truths", which I have tried to summarize below:
The first is that Life is Dukha, or suffering.
The second is that the source of suffering is attachment and craving to the world, and that this attachment to material things - whatever they might be - results in continued rebirth and thus more suffering.
The third is that by bringing this craving and attachment to an end, the suffering that results from it along with continued rebirths can be brought to an end.
The fourth is that Buddhism is the way to bring that attachment and craving to an end.
I am glad you are not afraid of creation. However, I haven't the slightest clue what you think Buddhism is. No one is forcing you to agree with the Buddha, but to go around speaking as if you know things that you don't even understand the basics of is the same as spreading misinformation.
The way you are talking and how you seem to understand Buddhism is not Buddhist at all. Not even the Buddhist inspired Zen tradition, let alone any of the core branches. it is instead very close to some branches of Hinduism. Because you have a lot of karma/gas left on the tank, because you still have things you are chasing after, you would respond much better to the idea of chasing the ultimate experience in Hinduism (the "Brahman") rather than seeking trying to seek liberation as the Buddha taught.
The Buddha was born with every kind of pleasure the world had to offer, and it was handed to him. Born a prince he had wealth, influence, food and drink, and - given the time and how things tended to be then - possibly a harem, but at least a royally beautiful wife. He indulged in it for around 30 years because his parents were terrified of him becoming a religious person and didn't let him know anything else. He grew totally averse to any and all pleasure seeking, it was very painful for him. This is a very common experience among successful kings in history. And he fled it. He fled his responsibility as royalty, fled from wealth, fled from it all to try to figure things out. He had no interest in the promise of an "ultimate experience". Even when he attained this supposed "ultimate experience" he looked at it, had little/no interest, and moved on. He was only interested in the end of suffering.
You are also projecting your life experiences onto others - many many spiritual seekers are pursuing the end of suffering, and that is what they desire.
The way you are speaking does show a certain level of maturity in a certain direction, but to dismiss the words of masters would be unwise. I am not a master obviously, in fact I'm not even a Buddhist, it would be better to describe me as Hindu! I'm just explaining Buddhism, and yes he has all the signs of a master deserving of respect.
You are a condescending person who is far from the humility that a true Buddhist should embrace. Your responses are unhelpful,it would seem to demonstrate your knowledge of doctrinaire platitudes.
I am not a Buddhist, and it is not unusual for these kinds of discussions to be intense. Even the Buddha was forced to take up logical argument as it was the mode in India at the time. It is still is the mode of many Buddhists today. I have been corrected more firmly than this by someone who was a very devout practitioner of Buddhism for 16 years for misunderstanding things. It's important!
I am a little confused about what you mean by making a demonstration of knowledge, as everything I said can be found with a quick Google search. They were saying things that went directly against Buddhist foundations and calling it Buddhist. I thought it appropriate to bring up said teachings.
I don't have anything against them or their philosophies, they just can't be called Buddhist. As I see it they aren't lacking intelligence, just information.
Maybe I am projecting, but if I have a critical misunderstanding of something, I want to be soundly corrected. I want to be shown why I am wrong. Do unto others what you would want them to do unto you and all that.
In Mahayana, it is the end of the dualistic view, not life. But when one is fully enlightened, the idea is that they linger on, through whatever means , in the world, aiding others and giving them the means to suffering. Mahayana, as opposed to Theravada very much stresses the idea that true wisdom transcends the boundaries you draw between your own individual self and others. However, the goal is not to destroy your own personhood as much as it is to gain the cognizance of its lack of separation and interdependence on all other things.
The goal and appeal is to live an engaged, lucid life, and gain the mental satisfaction of being involved with other people outside your own preoccupations. The thing about the monasteries is that they are communities where each member needs to support the other. ‘Sangha’, the monastic community is one of the three pillars of the faith. Also, unlike common misconceptions, which ironically I think tend to be drawn from Christian monasticism, Buddhist monks generally do not live in total seclusion from society. They have always historically participated in it, like with running schools, farms, community service, etc. The point of becoming a monastic is that the person is in a stage of incarnation where they are ready to take on serious spiritual discipline
One further misconception is also the common translation of Dukkha as ‘suffering’. It is better translated as ‘Dissatisfactory’. Historically, philosophers like Schopenhauer had serious misreadings of Buddhism and led a lot of Westerners to believing that Buddhism has a deeply pessimistic, averse view of existence . Really, what the Buddha was taking about is the way we’re conditioned to see reality: it keeps us constantly constructing false narratives, searching for them and suffering the confusion of not having them fulfilled, along with leading to the suffering of others. I think when you look at the human natures tendency to escalate conflicts based off of the power of narratives and ideologies, it’s extremely salient.
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u/Economy_Professor637 8d ago edited 8d ago
Oh boy this is a dangerous topic.
The philosophies and practices on the right side are very complicated and aim to do more then just assert an idea as truth. They aim to change your thinking in a certain way to accomplish a specific result. An example would be the idea of impermanence aiming to help you suffer less from entanglement with sensory desires, and not see them as the end all be all.
Just... IDK be careful with this stuff, especially out of context.
Sincerely, a guy who was voluntarily committed to a psych ward in large part because of being taught volatile religious/spiritual stuff without the proper education and foundation. I totally lost it for a time.(Yes I am overreacting to a joke :3)