/lit/ - Literature

How is any of that contradictory?

>>18660706
If "you" don't reincarnate, what does?
If "you" are not bound by karma, who is?
If "you" don't attain nirvana, who does?

If "you" just die and vanish without going into the cycle then you get a nirvanna free pass by just dying. The entirety of buddhism is unnecessary then and anyone could become enlightened by just killing themselves.

>>18660681
Any philosophy that claims that self is an illusion fails to explain the illusion of what.

>>18660715
Everyone is bound by karma. You are born into a very specific circumstance due to the actions of everyone around you and everyone who came before you.

Reincarnation is upaya for medieval peasants. Helpful in that, alongside the concept of karma, it helps them empathize with beings around them and reduces harm-causing behavior. You're not turning into a lobster upon death because you called your mom a bad word but every action has its consequences.

Nirvana is death. The entire purpose of Buddhism is to alleviate the suffering of living things, part of that is to make the death sentence we've all been given less frightening. If a peasant dies in a peaceful state then Buddhism has done its job.

Suicide is often a selfish choice and may have negative consequences for those around you. That's it.

>>18660739
What keeps someone from simply maximizing the pleasure they feel and then killing themselves, or just subjugating others?
Where would this empathy to others come from, within the buddhist framework?

>>18660750
>What keeps someone from simply maximizing the pleasure they feel and then killing themselves
people tend to become attached to these pleasures, such people often fear death, though i'm sure some get burned out after years of debauchery and off themselves

>or just subjugating others?
people do this all the time, everywhere.

>Where would this empathy to others come from, within the buddhist framework?
the concept of karma as mentioned above, we are all affected by the actions of ourselves and others. of course such logic is too much for many people, instead they need the threat of punishment in the hereafter

>>18660739
>nirvana is death
so we all ought to kill ourselves to attain nirvana
I am enlightened

>>18660681
>that swastika
i thought Buddhism was peaceful?

Buddhism doesn't think you exist for more than a moment beyond dependent arising iirc

>>18660770
nirvana is death, not "death is enlightenment". major difference for literate people there.

>>18660739
I can see why its so appealing to modernists

>>18660681
A dialetheia is a sentence, A, such that both it and its negation, ¬A, are true.

For work on dialetheism in Buddhism, see the collections Garfield et al 2009 and Tanaka et al 2015. For discussion as to whether dialetheism is the appropriate way to interpret Buddhist texts, see the papers in Tanaka 2013.

>>18660715
Consider the branches of a fractal pattern. While we can single out a specific branch, it is still a part of the whole. Relating that to human beings, they are like branches, distinguishable
but connected together with everything else within this unifying underlying structure.

What reincarnates is everything. The whole shimmering structure of existence is a ripple on the surface of one unified unsettled consciousness

>>18660681
buddhism is bullshit. they can't explain it. it's supposed to be some transcendental you who (you) ought to look out for, so that they - who are essentially identical with you, but not you - can attain nibbana.

>>18660851
Not him, but does this mean Buddhists believe in transmigration? Since it is a the universal consciousness that reincarnates and not an individual self. But, if that was the case, why then (at least from what I know) is some memories passed on in the next person? With chossing the Dalai Lama, they test the child canidate with objects owned by the previous Dalai Lama. I dont see the logic behind this, unless it is something exclusive to certain sects of Buddhism

>>18660770
No that doesn’t count because… it just doesn’t ok!

>>18660830
We can tell that is wrong because if it was true we couldnt observe the arising and falling of thoughts and physical sensations because of this requiring a non-momentary observing presence but we do

>An unschooled beggar woman in Tibet, strong in the faith of the Buddha, has a more enviable lot than many an eminent professor in other lands whose obsessive pursuit of purely samsaric investigations constitutes an obstacle a hundred times more insurmountable than mere illiteracy and some degree of petty superstition could ever be for that poor woman.... Her simple faith, however limited, must count as an elementary knowledge, whereas colossal erudition directed, not to the centre but to numberless peripheral phenomena, must count as a peculiarly pretentious form of ignorance

>>18660725
it's an understanding that arises. it is called an "illusion" because it doesn't have any absolute reality. it's as real as any other understanding that arises.

>>18660860
I'm not deeply read on Tibetan Buddhism, but from what I've gathered, their theories about transmigration, most famously expounded in the Book of the Dead or Bardo Thodol, were heavily influenced by indigenous pre-Buddhist mystic practices. In the mentioned book, consciousness, or at least the fractal branch which was forming the dying body, slips upon death into a weird psychedelic zone filled with various terrifying divine figures and unless it stabilizes itself, it will get sucked into a vortex, through which it will be born again.

In a generalized Buddhist context, I guess the phenomenon of one person being a continuation of a passed one can be explained as the mind stuff simply being tumbled around. Since there is no real distinction between matter and thoughts, the mental imprint of one instantiation, or fractal branch, simply got pressed into another as maya rolls around.

>>18660851
>n the surface of one unified unsettled consciousness
buddha teaches this?
is it known what his argument was for this theory of transmigration or is it more like "I have seen the truth, this is it, take it or leave it"?

>>18660906
I guess it's fair to say that it boils down to the latter. No argument can really bring to the core of the teaching, except an actual mystical insight or attainment

>>18660681
Why does the Buddha say there is no Atman?

>>18660974
I heard from a perennialist that he de-emphasized an atman because the hinduism of his time had become overly focused on the immanence of the self, whereas the road to enlightenment is through its transcendence. so that he was compensating for a misunderstanding of his time.

>>18661143
>immanence of the self, whereas the road to enlightenment is through its transcendence
by this I mean sometihng like saguna and nirguna

>>18660739
Not saying you're wrong, but you should preface this by saying that this is *not* how Buddhists and most scholars of Buddhism understand it

>>18660872
>What are memories

>>18660851
This is Advaitism not Buddhism. Stop confusing anons with your own interpretation of Buddhism

>>18660906
Buddha does NOT reach this

>>18660681
>a product of causal factors needs to be eternal or else there is no causality
Try reading a book next time before you post something so off the mark

>>18661354
>>18661362

Care to point out what exactly is wrong with my understanding? If atman does not exist, no phenomenon is grounded in essentiality, in self-hood. This leads to maya, the world of phemonena, being grasped as a whole, with all classifying and demarcation reduced to a status of illusion.

>>18660739
>Nirvana is death.
Another based non-reader like the OP. All life is fueled by the death and decomposition of other life. So you're not quite getting the point here.

>>18660895
You failed to answer, just changed the semantic from illusion to understanding. If the understanding "arises", then who receives that rise and understands the understanding if Self is not real? At which point does the concept of self enter the picture, what how and why it is formed, to deceive whom?

>>18660715
"you" is just one of the ideas in your head. There's no you.

>>18661665
what about this ^

>>18660681
Yeah I don’t understand karma. I think it only applies within a single lifetime. But I’m not sure what determines the life that “I” will live next, and whether or not “I” will live all possible lives, and if becoming more enlightened will somehow lead to a more advanced life in my next reincarnation. I would rather believe in some sort of soul or something, but I just can’t see it

>>18660902
>In the mentioned book, consciousness, or at least the fractal branch which was forming the dying body, slips upon death into a weird psychedelic zone filled with various terrifying divine figures and unless it stabilizes itself, it will get sucked into a vortex, through which it will be born again.

I once took a shit ton of ketamine and experienced this. it was pretty cool

Not all of Buddhism believes in reincarnation.

>>18661702
Which school doesn't?

>>18661713
Technically none of them teach reincarnation since you aren't supposed to hypostatize the causal factors conditioning birth(s) into a transmigrating "self." On the other hand the Tibetans may have worked out some scholastic loophole to reconcile lamaism with Buddhism. More literally, some of the modernists across different schools totally deny rebirth and therefore reincarnation as well (and do other stuff like claim Buddhism is literally neuroscience or that it isn't actually a religion).

The only good branches of buddhism are shingon and jonang

>>18661751
Rebirth is fundamental to all Buddhist schools. Your word means absolutely nothing in comparison to Buddha's, the literal namesake...
>modernists
So, not Buddhists...

Concerning rebirth, it should be noted that it shouldn't be interpreted as soul being set into flesh again. It refers to the whole process of existence perpetuating itself, of samsara feeding on its own momentum and taking another spin

>>18660725
The self is an illusion of the self.

>>18661751
Why do you have opinions on topics that you know nothing about?
>b-but the mahaparinirvana sutra says...
That Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. Emptiness is a how, not a what.
>b-but the diamond body...
Is Empty.

>>18661698
Karma in Hinduism is a cosmic tally system; it requires a tallier. Karma in Sikhism is a cosmic tally system made out of clockwork; a tallier made it, but doesn't run it. Karma in Jainism is colored burrs (each "kind" of karma is a different "color"), and your soul is made of cotton; the goal of a Jain is to pluck the burrs off of his soul ("his" is gendered here; women CANNOT achieve enlightenment) and then starve to death while lying motionless (so as to not acquire more karma).

In Buddhism, however, Karma is just cause and effect. I mean that literally, it's an instantaneous thing. In folk Buddhism, karma is often talked about as something akin to divine retribution, where it "waits", but properly it doesn't, it's instantaneous. In certain traditions of Buddhist scholasticism they try to come up with more advanced understandings of Karma where Karma does sort of "wait", but the simple fact is that if you go out and rape and murder a baby, your actions planted the seed, and whether you view the fruition as "the moment you are reborn in hell" or "the moment you damn yourself to hell", it's really irrelevant because it's just an arbitrary classification of terminology.

What determines the next life? What is done in this one. You're constantly being reborn, every second. The "you" that was two seconds ago is not the "you" that is now is not the "you" that will be in 2 more seconds. There's a chain of causality and continuity between each of those "yous", just as there is with the "yous" (plural, there's technically nothing preventing "multiple-rebirth") that come about after "your" death. All we're talking about here are kinds of change. But change is change.

>>18662048
>Why do you have opinions on topics that you know nothing about?
I should ask you the same question. Who are you even quoting?

>>18662104
Start with What the Buddha Taught, then read the Heart Sutra.

>>18662110
Sorry, I'm already galaxybrained. But you'll get there in an eon or so.

If the Self is an illusion then the robber is the happiest man because someone else will bare the fruits of his actions while the virtuous man is the saddest because someone else will bare the fruits of his actions.

>>18662155
If there is a self, you are either a dualist or solipsist, and such are untenable systems through reasoning.

>>18662169
>reasoning away the reasoner is reasonable

>>18660681
The static self is an illusion in the premice that for example your cells etc change all the time while you remain you

>>18662191
There is no reasoner, just reasoning.

>>18662155
You can't steal what you already have; no one can steal what you already lack.

>>18662205
>You can't steal what you already have; no one can steal what you already lack.
deep

>>18662191
>having a reasoner apart from reason is reasonable

>>18660770
It's forced.

>>18660840
All anti-modernists flirted with Buddhism back in the day. Modernism is a positivist school of thought.

>>18661665
>"you" is just one of the ideas in your
Wait for it...

>>18661579
well, I don't base the following in any buddhist reading, but I believe it is an illusion that pertains to ultimate reality. From sufism: the moon reflects the light of the sun. It shines with the suns light, but its essence is not the sun. It is not that it has nothing to do with the sun, but it is not the sun, and preoccuptation with it occludes knowledge of the sun, which after all is the great source of light. I have never heard a buddhist give any kind of an explanation as to why the dharma is what it is. the above is I think a fairly typical monotheistic explanation.

>>18662370
>a e-sufist debates guenonfag about a Buddhist topic neither of them are familiar with
Just another day on /lit/

>>18662453
the question is where the desire comes from and what it is ontologically speaking

>>18662110
You've been posting this exact same reply for over a year when responding to anyone who disagrees with your views, like a fucking baby incapable of explaining themselves like a normal person.
>if your next post is "Start with What the Buddha Taught, then read the Heart Sutra", you will never be freed from the cycle

>>18660739
>The entire purpose of Buddhism is to alleviate the suffering of living things
The Buddhist strict system of alleviating suffering is only justified if a being is going through eons upon eons of lives which are all marked by suffering. If Buddhism taught your reddit rendition of it where there is just one life and there is some suffering in it until your poof out of existence then certainly it would be much more proper to advice people into hedonism in order to become ignorant as much as possible of this suffering.

>>18662275
taking symbolic language as real...
NGMI
forever locked in karma

>>18662523
>whenever i make glaring errors on a topic i dont know anything about people tell me to read the basics
have you considered that perhaps the problem is you?

>>18662527
people often forget the context that the buddha came from. early critics of buddhism thought that the whole "yeah you can go from zero to nirvana in like ten rebirths tops" thing was far too quick. this is especially compared to the jains who think that you need like a thousand

Ιt's all part of the proccess bro...

>>18662560
>early critics of buddhism thought that the whole "yeah you can go from zero to nirvana in like ten rebirths tops" thing was far too quick
iirc "rebirths" is used basically for attachments in this life in the Bhagavad Gita. when you act with attachment you create a self relative to the goal of that action. this is a birth.

>>18662567
bro...

>>18662580
Υες bro

>>18662533
Good point, I shall take your reply as non-existent and conclude that I win the debate.

>>18662527
>it would be much more proper to advice people into hedonism in order to become ignorant as much as possible of this suffering.
If you think hedonism will reduce suffering, it shows how little you understand Buddhism, my dear ladle

>>18660681
Actions that lessen suffering are possible?

>>18660681
>But the self is an illusion, so whatever reincarnates is not "you", because "you" don't exist.
It’s not you, as in, you are not an eternal unchanging soul that keeps being placed into new beings. But every particle in your body has been replaced, and are you not still “you”? You are, because there’s continuation.
>>18660739
There’s no soul in the sense of the ‘atman’; there’s no unified, unchanging ‘you’... and ultimately the Buddha wants the giving-up of identification with illusion. But there is still nontrivial continuation of existence, of which ‘you’ are unescapably a part. And nirvana is not just death. How ridiculous would it be if the Buddha taught us how to reach something that we didn’t even need to try to achieve? I don’t know what literature you’re reading on this subject (if anything at all) but you’re seriously misconstruing Buddhist philosophy

>>18662772
Buddhism is pretty clear that the suffering in joy and getting what you want etc must be understod through practice and insight, which is different from the obvious suffering that can be grasped in negative feelings.

If your "nihilism you only got one life better make the best of it :D:D::D:D" take on Buddhism was real then hedonism would obviously be a superior practice since whether you've reduced or merely masked suffering after you've poofed out of existence is irrelevant.

>>18662675
but there's no 'I', anon...

>>18662966
If we could find even a single example of a hedonist that claims to have had a happy life and is suddenly taken away by death at the peak of their debauchery, what would this say to the austere frugal buddhist that only eats rice in a temple somewhere?

>>18663006
dunno... maybe... "wish I had fucked more bimbo tiddies since apparently i've been lied to my entire life and the Buddha supposedly lie-... I mean upaya'd when he talked about eons of lifetimes and the tiresome wheel of samsara, and Buddhism is fake and gay, and soon i'll be never more. Give me some fish and chips please."

What is your point though?

>>18660681
>making sense out of religion
KEK anon, I'm no Buddhist but it seems that you didn't got the ego thing.

>>18663040
out of all nonsense, OP picks the one that makes more sense. Anons are pure KEK

>>18662978
Experience suggests otherwise

>>18663110
>Experience
this is the problem

>>18660873
Exemplary post. Nice work, anon.

No point in discussing this without getting to the nitty gritty. If you want to experience what this Buddhism shit is all about, forgo the Internet for the rest of the day if you don't have to use it and instead do the following.

Shower in cold water.

Lie on a mat, or simply floor. Eyes closed. Do the deepest steady inhale through the mouth that you can, fill up yourself with air as much as you can, then let the air leave your lungs without straining to exhale at all. Then again deep inhale. Do 30 of these deep inhales. After doing 30, exhale completely using effort and don't breathe again for as long as you can. When you feel like you will have to inhale, breathe in as much as you can through the mouth and hold it for 15 seconds, keeping and forcing the pressure a bit to your head. Then release.

Now do the same process two more times. 30 inhales, exhale without breathing as long as you can, deep inhale, hold it in for 15 seconds.

After completing three sets, sit cross legged or semi lotus, if you can sit comfortably in a full lotus position, you probably aren't reading this. Place the back of your hands on your knees, while pressing the tips of your thumb and index finger, other fingers straight. Don't apply any effort to breathing, let your body do it on its own, even if it seems too shallow. Now you simply observe. If you catch that you are overwhelmed with thoughts, focus on the process of breathing. When you steady yourself, let your awareness be still and envelop as much sensations as it can - the body feelings, the sounds in the room, the light phenomena happening in the darkness of closed eyes, the thought processes. If again a thought starts to assert itself and narrow your awareness, go back to the breathing and then expand and still the awareness again.

Stay like this for as much as you can.

I implore you. Please try this.

>>18663122
What are you going to say it is an illusion? What do you have to back up that claim?

>>18660873
>Westerners deifying and glorifying misery and ignorance.
God damn I wish I could die already.

>>18663171
what I have is experience
lmao
for real tho
everyday experience is sunyata.

We barely remember what came before this precious moment
Choosing to be here right now
Hold on, stay inside
This body holding me
Reminding me that I am not alone in
This body makes me feel eternal
All this pain is an illusion

>>18662966
Hedonism doesn't reduce suffering, it increases it, multiplies it, noticeably. That's the point. Such behavior affects not only yourself but those in the world around you. Buddhist practice on the other hand alleviates suffering - try it out if you don't believe me. Even if we have but one short life the choice to me is obvious.

>>18662966
Also you suggest that death means no longer caring about the world or its inhabitants, but normal people still deeply care about the prospects of their children etc., even knowing they won't be here to experience their joys or sorrows.

>>18663185
How's the last 2000 years treated you?

>>18662479
>>18662479
>>18662479

>>18663169
Aren't you choking your thoughts this way instead of letting them complete their circles?

>>18661348
>>What are memories
That explanation fails to rescue momentariness from its obvious contradictions because in order to know all the arising and falling of thoughts and sensory perceptions that are happening constantly throughout the day you would have to spend practically all your time doing nothing but remembering, which is not how we experience our own minds.

>>18662205
>There is no reasoner, just reasoning.
Reasoning isn't self-aware, that reasoning is know at all reveals the presence of the reasoner by virtue of reasonings inability to be self-aware.

>>18662169
>If there is a self, you are either a dualist or solipsist, and such are untenable systems through reasoning.
can you elaborate? that seems like a nonsense assertion

>>18662908
>here’s no soul in the sense of the ‘atman’; there’s no unified, unchanging ‘you’
The Atman is the unified, unchanging you, this Atman who is you and me is the presence within which everything else takes place and is known.

>>18664299
>you have to have an atman in order to justify the atman being able to do stuff
Stuff occurs, and it doesn't need an atman to. So why not just stop running in circles and babbling about how you don't exist, and just accept reality?

>>18664258
You're implying that people have perfect understanding of themselves. They don't.

>>18663816
No, it just doesn't allow thoughts to take up all of your awareness. Sometimes a memory or a daydream or a conceptual line of thinking pops up and becomes so evolving it makes us stop being aware of our surroundings, our body, our senses. Mental phenomena can play out, you don't have to stifle your thoughts, but only balance them within a larger structure of sensory data

>>18664685
Becomes so involving*

>>18664299
Sure. If there's a real self you've split reality into grasper and grasped, or subject and object. So now you have dualism. Or, if there is a real Self in the sense of the Atman, outside of which nothing exists, you have solipsism. Both views would contradict the observation of interdependence, causality, etc.

>>18664700
>the observation of interdependence, causality, etc.
He's going to argue that these don't exist because you can't trust your senses. The entire point of Advaita Vedanta IS that nothing but Atman exists. Trees, chariots, people, thoughts, feelings, sensory data, it's all made of Nothing. It's illusory.

>>18664709
Yes I am familiar with /lit/'s glossing of Guenon's summary of Shankara's commentary on the Upanishads, written after the Buddhists had brahmin-broken India for centuries. Somehow phenomena are still empty but now it's because Brahman makes them that way to sell copies of the Vedas.

Buddhism is literally feels over reals. Trying to reach something through argumentation is missing the point. You have to feel it, experience it. Peer into the nothingness

>>18664700
>the observation of interdependence, causality
why would this have objective reality?

>>18664774
>>18664709
lmao I swear I am not him
>>18664730
you have to admit that theism does provide some answers to some questions where buddhists provide less answers, and that probably you are not truly qualified to have a position either way
unless you are of course.

>>18664776
Belief in deities is totally accepted by Buddhism. Rather, the Abrahamic postulation of Yahweh (which is roughly equivalent to the Vishnadvaita postulation of Brahman) and the Advaita Vedantin postulation of Atman which is Brahman are rejected.

>>18664786
how come there are absolute truths?

>>18663198
Nigga I'm pretty sure you're alone

>>18664776
>you have to admit that theism does provide some answers to some questions where buddhists provide less answers
They're not correct answers but then again it's important to ask the right questions. In the nikayas there is literally a "Brahma's Net Sutra" that goes over a bunch of "wrong answers" from the Buddhist pov.
>>18664786
Most straightforward comparison is Iśvara. Brahman-Atman is so late in medieval India that few Buddhists are around to respond to it. (There were some very late Yogacara-Madhyamaka scholastic works iirc but a lot of those are sitting in heterodox Tibetan monasteries). In any event, still a transcendent uncaused creator god, still rejected by Buddhists.

>>18664786
I sometimes get the strong impression that buddhists and hindus believe the same things exist, the only difference is that hindus somewhat call one of those things a self. absolutely no difference as regards what is, but a difference in what to call it.

>>18664837
>They're not correct answers but then again it's important to ask the right questions. In the nikayas there is literally a "Brahma's Net Sutra" that goes over a bunch of "wrong answers" from the Buddhist pov.
give me a basic gestalt. I think essentially the argument for the Creator is that there does exist something un-conditioned, un-born (Buddha also recognizes this), and, being un-conditioned, it exists absolutely, on its own. This is consciousness. All relative existence, Indras web, exists within consciousness. It exists because it is known. I am aware of buddhist arguments that knowledge and the known arise mutually, but this fails to recognize that knowledge of the Creator arises out of knowledge of knowledge, consciousness of consciousness, which implies a kind of singular impossibility from a framework of mutual arising. At least as far as I can see this presents a challenge to a doctrine of mutual arising, as it does seem to show that consciousness has a reality of its own. As far as I know Buddha has been more nuanced about this than the average 4chan "buddhist" will let on or even know about.

So the point is that this absolute exists without a framework, but Indras web does not, it exists within consciousness. So there exists a framework where only consciousness exists, and there exists consciousness engaged with Indras web. Indras web is a sum of makeable distinctions, and distinction indicates finality. Even if there were infinite elements in Indras web, they would still be elements in Indras web, given reality by the fact that they are known. So at one point there is only the absolute, and then at another point there is the absolute and something which only has reality because it is given reality by the absolute. This conspicuously points to a Creator.

>>18664837
>Most straightforward comparison is Iśvara
Absolutely, thank you for bringing this up, it completely slipped my mind.

>>18664861
"Hindus" is so vague as to be meaningless. The Dvaitans for example absolutely do not posit anything with commonality with Buddhism. While Advaita Vedanta being Crypto-Buddhism is well known, you can actually find more similarities to it with Vishishtadvaitans.

>>18664915
Nothing "points to a Creator" except (You). If that creator is a knowledge arising from knowledge, or a knowledge of knowledge, how is it any more absolute than other discursive thoughts from knowledge or consciousness which are rejected as contingent? To me this is the problem with the post-Buddhist nondual Hindu schools, they take the emptiness or the illusion nature of phenomena and then add God back to it. Or as you are doing, they assert it is consciousness, which is also asserted to be God and he is a full stop. Indra's web gets used in different ways depending on who is referencing it—it's also interesting to note that Buddhists kept Indra while Hindus largely moved on to Vashnaivism, Saivism or Brahman-Atmanism—but the Huayan position as I understand it at least is that the jewels are capable of reflecting each other endlessly because of their emptiness; were a jewel of distinct substance it could not allow images to pass through. Consciousness here is less of a what and more the how; it's how you grasp the images. The contrary would be like saying sight or smell are eternal because they are experienced—you haven't always seen and smelled since you arose from something else.

>>18664679
>Stuff occurs, and it doesn't need an atman to.
Way to avoid the point of the argument entirely. You yourself cannot deny unless you're a fool that knowledge or some semblance of it is known, because if there is no knowledge then you wouldn't be able to have conversations with people such as right now, because they require you to know and formulate responses to what other people say.

This leads to "how is that knowledge known, by what means, by who?", saying that nothing knows that knowledge is incongruous with our experience. So, this knowledge can either be known by itself or by something else. The position that particular instances of knowledge like thoughts are known not by themselves, but rather are known by an inner conscious presence which continues in-between those particular instances of knowledge is the only position on consciousness that both fully aligns with our lived experience and which is free of all logical contradictions.

In the example you gave of reasoning for instance, the notion that discursive ideations in the mind/intellect are known by themselves is clearly nonsense, one thought would have to know the prior thought as well as itself to form chains of reasoning, and then this leads to the question of does that thought know the totality of the previous thought, or just the portion not related to the 3rd thought before that thought which that 2nd thought itself had knowledge of, either of these positions leads to weird contradictions and it doesn't align with the way in which our thoughts present themselves to our awareness, it actually leads to a kind of psychological atomism that ends up in absurd regresses that reveal the inadequacy of all attempts at explaining away the persistence of immediate and non-discursive witness-consciousness which occurs simultaneously with the ideations which it reveals.

>You're implying that people have perfect understanding of themselves. They don't.
No, just that the amount of memory needed alone to notice groups of cars and people walking around would be impossible with momentary non-persisting awareness. We can walk down the street and have a dozen or more people and additional cars be known to us at once merely by them occupying our sight, at the same time that we are aware of the sounds of the cars, the color of peoples clothes, the smell of the gasoline. When focusing or not focusing on one thing like a person, we never really lose awareness of the smells and colors around us, changes within those things still immediately present themselves to our awareness when they occur. Otherwise if you were engrossed with the sight of something you wouldn't hear a sudden loud noise, but we know this isn't true from experience.

>>18665053

The amount of time that would be required to be spent remembering things like the changes in colors, sounds, thoughts etc in the absence of a persisting observer to notice all these constant changes is ridiculously high. By claiming in ignorance that there is no persisting witness-presence who at once illuminates the whole display of changing thoughts and sensory perceptions and these changes are recognized via memory, you are advocating for a position that just to walk down a hallway would many moments wherein change is noticed, in sight, sound, muscles moving and feet contacting the ground, in order to notice all these changes you'd have to be doing nothing but constantly remembering and nothing else, there being too many to have a single moment to think about something else other than recognizing minute changes every second through memory of the previous moment.

Even if you said that just one memory is needed which covers the whole previous moments thoughts and physical sensations in one big snapshot which captures all of it, this would leave no time for thoughts in-between the conscious remembering of things, and if you claimed that this memory was an unconscious recognition which occurs at every moment and which can happen at the same time as thoughts, you are proposing some totally speculative and unknowable thing which we never experience which has further contradictions and which is just begging the question.

>>18665058
>>18664700
>Sure. If there's a real self you've split reality into grasper and grasped, or subject and object. So now you have dualism.
It's not dualism if the Self is the non-dual self-revealing presence within which the sense of subject and object come and go as distinctions within the intellect that is illuminated by that non-dual presence, as Advaita says. The relation of that self-intuiting presence to these distinctions is like that of space to the objects contained within it, insofar as the objects within the expanse of space produce no change in space and no impact whatsoever upon space itself, either the portion of space which they reside within or other space. Dualism means to set up two equally real principles or realities, if the Self is the only eternal reality with everything else being indeterminate appearances which eventually are sublated as ultimately unreal and which then vanish, leaving alone the eternal Self as the infinite immortal presence, it remains a consistent non-dualism.

Some schools of Tibetan Buddhism understand this and don't make the mistake of denying it. Some of them give this idea primacy while others try to combine it in some way with other Buddhist principles. Some Dzogchen writers in describing it use the same illustration of a crystal appearing to take on the color of stuff near it that Shankara had already used centuries earlier, the same illustration with reference to the sky and the things contained within it can be found in the Uttara Gita in the Mahabharata.
>The analogy given by Dzogchen masters is that one's true nature is like a mirror which reflects with complete openness, but is not affected by the reflections; or like a crystal ball that takes on the colour of the material on which it is placed without itself being changed. The knowledge that ensues from recognizing this mirror-like clarity (which cannot be found by searching nor identified)[113] is called rigpa.[114]

>>18665065

>Or, if there is a real Self in the sense of the Atman, outside of which nothing exists, you have solipsism. Both views would contradict the observation of interdependence, causality, etc.
That's not solipsism as it's used in the western sense of a thinking individual thinking everything else aside from his mind or experience doesn't exist. In Advaita Vedanta, the same conscious presence in you and me exists as well equally in all living beings, so this position is not denying that other living beings have real consciousness like solipsism denies this. The Advaita Vedanta position is not hurt or refuted in the slightest by the observation of causality in the world or the observation of things sometimes being dependent on each other, because these belong to a display that is projected by a Entity who transcends the web of casual relations and dependence and who is the necessary fact required for these webs to take place at all.

The Advaita position is able to account for these in a more logical way than the Buddhist position, as Shankara explains in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya the notion that beginningless co-dependent origination could account for samsara as Buddhists maintain is completely illogical because the 12 links within the chain of pratityasamutpada and the whole chain itself both cannot be eternal either individually or together, because Buddhists don't admit any eternal eternal entities or things; if they are not uncaused and eternal, their existence or semblance of existence must arise on the basis of something else, but if the being or existence of the chain of co-dependent origination is produced by the activity of the 12 links within the chain, then it leads to a regress because the non-eternal and contingent individual 12 links (A) can never emerge into being/existence from the activity/chain/process of pratityasamutpada (B), which prevents B from ever emerging because its constituted by and predicating on A already having emerged for it to have existence, and so B can't ever emerge from A and A can't ever emerge from B and it prevents beginningless co-dependent origination from even existing at all, even as ignorance/delusion.

>>18665053
>an atman has to exist because otherwise stuff would be happening without an atman
If you're trying to argue to that something HAS to exist, rather than just demonstrating how things occur, then you're already on the wrong path.

Oh no the indo-thomist is here to tell all the indo-atheists that God did it.

>>18665190
we must await the coming of the indo-indoist

>>18665077
>If you're trying to argue to that something HAS to exist, rather than just demonstrating how things occur, then you're already on the wrong path.

anon 1 (robot voice): Something like a self or Atman doesn't have to exist for me to be speaking right now, there is just thoughts but not a thinker or knower of them

anon 2: okay so if I'm talking not with a knower of thoughts themselves but just a series of thoughts, then answer me this: which thought am I talking to right now, which thought is hearing my voice?

anon 1: not me, that was another thought from moments ago and not I, in fact, I'm not even the same thought since I began this sentence, but every moment a new thought has emerged, it is only because of each thought being imbued with or having access to knowledge or memory of prior thoughts that I'm to formulate long sentences like this by knowing what context I'm speaking in when each thought-instance formulates the next thought and what my mouth says next. I only speak of myself as being the same being who said mouth some dozen words ago by way of social convention.

anon 2: Wow, that sounds ridiculous, how can you even think about what to say next and act upon it if the thought that carries it out is different than the one that conceived of potentially doing it? How can you even think about what to say and do next if at every moment your mind is continuously occupied with detecting the small changes at every moment through memory, which a mental process? How do you know both at the same time, both the thought and the memory? Trying to understand a new idea for example is experienced as a distinct type of mental ideation that is different from engaging in the remembrance of an instance from this morning, how can you say that these occur at the same time constantly and let us detect change that way when we experience memory-instances and distinct thoughts as different and as occurring in different moments? If you don't know both at the same time, that would mean during a single thought all change in the world/phenomena would be completely undetectable and unknowable which is contradicted by how we experience things.

anon 1: *error* *programmed script fails* *initiate reboot mode* *ignores argument and makes strawman* *insert read what the buddha taught and heart sutra spam.txt*

>>18665314
>we're all just god piloting himself while being ignorant of what isn't himself because god's power of illusion veils god from himself
Ah yes truly a brilliant scholastic system you've got.

>>18665364
>*ignores argument and makes strawman*
like clockwork

>>18665386
>my strawman wasn't a strawman since I wrote it
What, we should take seriously your opinion that mind magically processes everything at the same time and therefore Buddhism is wrong?

>>18665400
>What, we should take seriously your opinion that mind magically processes everything at the same time and therefore Buddhism is wrong?
Do you mean the fact that the mind and its functions including thoughts and senses are illuminated all at once by a witnessing presence consisting of self-intuiting foundational awareness? Well, this position was held to by someone who is widely considered one of the wisest and most intelligent eastern philosophers, some even say of all time; a man who performed the lions share of the task of intellectually vanquishing Buddhism from India with his irrevocable refutations which the Buddhists never could muster a reply to, I am speaking of course of Sri Śaṅkarācārya. Aside from that, this point about the united of experience is also demonstrated by numerous common examples of how the contents of the mind is experienced within our conscious lived experience as a unity, as for example in the unity in knowledge of thought and sense-perception, as demonstrated when for example thinking about another person doesn't prevent you from seeing what's in front of your face, instead that thought and sense-perception coincide within knowing awareness as different types of objects presented to it at once.

Any one portion of the mind like an individual thought, intuition, memory etc upon analysis is clearly unable to know both itself and the rest of the conscious functions of the mind and senses simultaneously, that nothing within the mind can know the whole of the conscious mind shows that there must be something else that is different from the mind and which knows the mind and its mental functions, and which allows for them to occur in a united fashion when they are known alike by it, such as when thought and sense-perception coincide. This thing that is different from the mind is the self-revealing formless pure unchanging consciousness, which allows for the distinct mental functions to be known at the same moment that sight, sound and touch are also known when they are illuminated by its light.

>>18665524
>Do you mean the fact that the mind and its functions including thoughts and senses are illuminated all at once by a witnessing presence consisting of self-intuiting foundational awareness?
Do you mean the restless, grubbing, distracted mind that comes up with delusions regarding almost everything it encounters, which varies from being to being such that they can hardly be said to apprehend the same phenomena, this leering vortex of fabrications, half-memories, and sensory imperfections, is a radiant self-knowing eternity? I have argued with you before. Shankara's scholastic wrangling to avoid being a Yogacarin Buddhist is impressive for a theologian but doesn't make him any more convincing to a non-Hindu.

>>18665568
>Do you mean the restless, grubbing, distracted mind that comes up with delusions regarding almost everything it encounters, which varies from being to being such that they can hardly be said to apprehend the same phenomena, this leering vortex of fabrications, half-memories, and sensory imperfections, is a radiant self-knowing eternity?
No that's wrong, if you had paid attention you would have known I was saying that consciousness is different from the mind, consciousness is free of delusions and distractions and consciousness is radiant and self-knowing while the mind isn't. It seems that you struggle to understand the distinction between the mind (which has specific acts that are known) and consciousness/awareness (presence which knows).

>Shankara's scholastic wrangling to avoid being a Yogacarin Buddhist is impressive for a theologian
Shankara rejects the most fundamental principles of Yogacharin Buddhism and he provided many insightful refutations of its doctrines. In addition, he derides their subjective idealism as retarded and instead holds to what could be described as ontological idealism, this places his teachings much closer to figures like Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonists, Christian theologians etc than it places Advaita to Yogachara.

>>18665611
>It seems that you struggle to understand the distinction between the mind (which has specific acts that are known) and consciousness/awareness (presence which knows).
This is a weird quirk of Indian scholasticism and was not a problem I had been concerned with. Your separating out of mind and consciousness is probably necessary for some scriptural reason but largely useless to an outside. Yogacarins do something similar with an eightfold consciousness. Yours is only two-fold, so good for you. As to your other point, yes I am aware you are an indo-thomist. It is amusing for an idealist to call another idealist a retard however, like two bald men fighting over a comb.

>>18665627
>Your separating out of mind and consciousness is probably necessary for some scriptural reason but largely useless to an outside.
It's demonstrated by our experience and logic. You don't even have any good arguments for otherwise but you instead tend to engage in increasingly elaborate and snide posturing.
>Yogacarins do something similar with an eightfold consciousness.
Their alaya-vijnana is still momentary and hence doesnt satisfactorily account for the continuing unity of experience from moment to moment.
>It is amusing for an idealist to call another idealist a retard however, like two bald men fighting over a comb.
The implication is over whether an individual's minds or the Absolute can sustain or be that which the relative is contingent upon, the contingent and that which is within it (mind) cannot be the origin of itself, the contingent cannot be contingent on itself but only on a non-contingent thing. The Advaita view is in accordance with logic, the other which is the Yogachara view is an illogical solipsism.

Buddhism is a giant cope
>s-ss-s-s-su-sure life may be awful and full of agony and horror and endless toil but I don't care because I'm, uh, enlightened, so there is no need for me to take effort to change anything

>>18665669
>It's demonstrated by our experience and logic.
No it is not logical that mind and consciousness are separate. That is a purely architectonic, and ultimately imputational distinction made by one Vedantist to impress other Vedantists.

>>18660681
No it's the children who are wrong.

>>18665693
This does somewhat confuse me as well. Sure it's great and all that you can find enlightenment right now, but how do you actually apply that to a life within a community? Letting go everything seems like you wouldn't hold yourself to the rigid structure of modern human life.

>>18665693
>s-ss-s-s-su-sure life may be awful and full of agony and horror and endless toil but I don't care because I'm, uh, enlightened
the complete opposite of the Buddha's attitude to the world

>>18660681
Read the Tibetan book of the dead. The idea is essentially eternal recurrence until one breaks the cycle in the intermediate stage and is guided by the various gods to true enlightenment, thus avoiding reincarnation in the lower planes of existence

>>18665014
nothing coherently true can really be said about it as language is relational. "consciousness" is not an adequate lable, truly. is there not something in buddhism of which nothing can be said?

>>18662560
>disagreements with you are glaring errors
Work on that metta, nigger

>>18662169
Yes I'm a dualist and you're a retard. Monism is annihilation

>>18665967
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mvyqPHvhhwc

>>18666513
I know for a fact it is. I said to much and (You) got something to hold onto, and (You) took it. all I needed to say was: there is something which is not sunyata, because its existence is not compounded. To be sunyata is to exist out of a relationship, which means that what is sunyata has an outer limit. What is not sunyata by necessity does not. Therefore what is absolute existed "before" what is sunyata.

Is there any branch of buddhism that
>isn't annihilationist in regards to the individual soul and its permanence, or at least suspends judgment pertaining to those matters
>is at the very least qualified nondualism
>has clear, practical and focused methods to reach enlightenment instead of unloading every concern on the bodhisattva path?
I guess buddhism isn't buddhism without anatta and anicca applying to everything but some branches are so far divorced from the original teachings that who knows, maybe there's something
I'm just frustrated because I see a lot of things (especially practices) in buddhism as sensible, but quite a few of the doctrines are bullshit too

namu amida butsu

>claims the world is an illusion
Why should I believe some random pajeet over my senses?

>>18666529
Is this legit? I thought Zen teachers weren't called "Zen master".

>>18666759
Idk i just watched the movie and another one of the same director.
Personally, i think we get overlost in the semantics and the ceremonial stuff.

>>18666759
What i do know is that this movie is KINO!

>>18666745
Many of your senses are deceiving by internal or external sourcer.

>>18660681
Your concepts here are wrong. Let me correct you.

>Entire premise of Buddhism is that there is an eternal cycle of reincarnations where you are bound by karma.

You are bound by ignorance/attachment, it's ignorance of the ultimate nature of reality that bounds you to samsara also know as the cicle of existence.

>But the self is an illusion, so whatever reincarnates is not "you", because "you" don't exist.

The self doesn't exist at all times, there is no "real you" that you can point out, be that in your body or outside of your body, as such what goes from life to life is the karmic force bounded by ignorance/attachment in a sense that the person that dies is not the same that is reborn, this also happens all the time, you are not the same person as you were 1 second ago.

>As such "you" vanish completely upon death.
You don't vanish, you realize by experiencing enlightment that you never existed as a eternal self-entity to begin with, and when you reach that point the teachings of the Buddha are no longer necessary.

>Is Buddhism entirely useless by its own metrics?
They are once you are Buddha, before that they are.

>>18666832
tl:dr; cult of annihilation

>>18666832
>before that they are not.

Do Buddhists actually deny Brahman or just call it by another name? How does it differ from Advaita Vedanta?

>>18666851
They say Brahman exists but isn't the creator of the universe and then bring up convoluted justifications with dependent origination and the "unanswered questions" to justify it
>How does it differ from Advaita Vedanta?
It doesn't

>>18666857
>the "unanswered questions"
what is this?

>>18666830
Proof?

>>18666964
Well, any addiction really.
Dellusions you create for yourself, misunderstandings, the list can go on.

>>18666930
The buddhist way of shutting down all criticism towards their faith

>>18667029
I get the impression that it is as you say, they do recognize the Brahman, they recognize all the same parts but don't agree that the parts point to the probability of a Creator. One does wonder though what they mean by the word "creation" if it is a verb that denotes something which to them does not exist

>>18667048
like, if no such thing as creation exists, what is it that a Creator is not?

>>18667048
I wouldn't get hung up on the metaphysics of buddhism if I were you becaue it all comes down to "you don't need to know" whenever you ask something that makes them uncomfortable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unanswered_questions

>>18667057
I did a lecture about this and it was implied that there might be a fifth choice. Idk...

>>18667057
>The Buddha states that it is unwise to be attached to both views of having and perceiving a self and views about not having a self.
lmao this creates problem for the e-buddhist

>>18667075
>noooo you don't have a self you are literally nothing just a mass of meaningless aggregates that get obliterated upon death aaaaaah tathagata please save me from the eternalists
/lit/ buddhists are pretty much just physicalists who like the aesthetic

>>18662908
>But every particle in your body has been replaced, and are you not still “you”?

Yes, because though the matter that composes the body may change, the immaterial soul does not.

If there is no "you," and there is no "unchanging soul," then what, exactly, is re-incarnated??

>>18667169
>what, exactly, is re-incarnated??
Buddhists will come up with copouts at this, answering with the likes of "exactly", "karma but it's not really you" and other non-answers. You're wasting your time

>>18660715
Lol yeah the Buddha had to do specific new lessons because monkes kept killing themselves during his time. Also monkes have been working with the questions you've been asking in various ways, most recently through loans to develop their practice.

>>18663185
>he thinks modern western philosophy isn't just myopic ignorance with pretense.

>>18667225
Koans, it must have though I was writing on Judaic religious practice

>>18667231
kek

"All phenomena are empty and devoid of self."

You don't have to stop at yourself, all dharmas are like this

>>18667028
Αlso lies come to mind as a sensory distortion. Both the internal and the external ones.

>>18667169
>If there is no "you," and there is no "unchanging soul," then what, exactly, is re-incarnated??
Correct. This is why Buddhists don't believe in reincarnation, they believe in rebirth. This was explained upthread.

>>18667500
>they believe in rebirth.
Fancy way to say annihilation. >>18661825 is right

>>18667512
Both Shingong and Jonang Buddhism hold to Sunyata and rebirth, though.

>>18667778
They hold to atman which makes the traditional buddhist view of rebirth into actual reincarnation

>>18667786
No they don't lmfao. Are you getting hung up on shentong vs rentong?

>>18667801
Yeah they do, educate yourself retard

>>18667805
What books have you read that would lead you to this conclusion?

>>18667810
"ur moms saggy ass" by all of /lit/

>>18667810
The eternal buddhacuck's deflection.
Read the works of Kukai where he repeatedly mentions the "great Self", and those of Dolpopa where he directly employs the term "atman" to describe the ultimate truth.
>b-but it's all upaya
Put down the Cope Sutra and real actual books

do all these pajeet words you guys use just mean God?

>>18668382
Eastern philosophy is the art of endlessly debating pointless terminology, let them have their fun

If it's rebirth instead of reincarnation, then what is it that is reborn? If there is no self, then it should be possible that parts of 'you' are reborn elsewhere, and that you are basically reborn as multiple creatures, correct?
But how would Nirvana stop this? Your body doesnt just stop existing on death; all the parts of it are consumed and reborn elsewhere (unless you launch it into a black hole).
>Inb4 thats just western materialism
Buddhism explicitly stresses the mortality of the body when meditating on impermanence

>be hindu 2500 years ago
>believe in personal particularized Abrahamic style atman
>Buddha rejects and refutes this view
>~1000 years later Hindus finally recognize that their atman is fake and gay and pretends they were talking about a universal substrate Atman all along
>attacks Buddhists for supposedly rejecting their new Buddhist influenced Atman doctrine
Face it, this is where 99% of all the shit flinging between Buddhists and Hindus arise from.

>>18668382
It's impossible to use the word God today without people associating it with the scheming goal oriented prophet sending son having god of the Bible.

It kinda loses all its validity as a signifier if it is used to signify both the personal Abrahamic god and the various non-Abrahamic conceptions of God.

>Read thread about buddhism
>understand buddhism less
what's the best way to start with it for a westerner?

>>18668694
Especially the introduction in this introduction.

>>18668468
Pajeet annihilationism is stupid, whether hinduist or buddhist

>>18665826
>No it is not logical that mind and consciousness are separate
Why do you think it is not logical? Do you have a single argument to back that up?

>>18668468
>~1000 years later Hindus finally recognize that their atman is fake and gay and pretends they were talking about a universal substrate Atman all along
This is what the Upanishads had always been talking about all along, even centuries before Buddha in the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya. That's why the Upanishads repeatedly state that there is one inner Self of all beings, instead of saying there are a multitude of particularized Atmans.

>>18660681
>Is Buddhism entirely useless by its own metrics?

And how! The greatest virtue is compassion...for that which does not really exist.

>>18668963
There are people who say that Jesus taught non-dualism too.

Face it, before the Buddha the Hindu understanding was closer to the Hare Krishna movement than Advaita.

>>18669008
>Jesus taught non-dualism
lol

>>18660681
It's a major problem. Because Buddhism denies personhood, reducing the self through dependent origination to a bundle of simples (which in turn are found to be nothingness) there is nothing for karma to attach to over a cycle of rebirths. The bundle self loses its dependently arisen attributes upon death, and there can be no continuity in rebirth because there is no substantial "basket" or "vehicle" to ground or hold attributes for the next incarnated self, who of course is just another bundle of dependently arisen attributes.

One school of Buddhism developed a philsophy of personalism to resolve the problem and recreate a de facto atman/soul/self, on Buddhism terms a "pudga", for karma to attach to and ground itself to to make the system work. They were reasonably succesful in India but never spread outside and died off to the Islamic invasions and resurgent Hinduism, leaving the missionary non-personalists dominant.

https://iep.utm.edu/pudgalav/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pudgalavada

>>18669017
I don't know why /lit/ is so obsessed with non-personalism, annihilationism and so on. It's a depressing worldview and it's not even like it makes the most sense.
For a board that tells everyone to read the Greeks, I get the impression most people here (the nondualism apologists at least) haven't read Plato.

>>18669016
>Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you :D:D:D:D::D:D:D::D:D:D:
>meditatingJesus.jpeg

>>18669033
This has nothing to do with nondualism, you're stretching terms to fit your opinion. "The kingdom of god is within you" is not a statement on nondualism

>>18669008
>There are people who say that Jesus taught non-dualism too.
Yeah, but the difference between that and what I am saying is the early Upanishads are large texts dating from before Buddha which contain dozens of passages repeatedly talking about the infinite Self that is Brahman etc, whether Jesus was talking about non-duality is much more ambiguous compared to the pre-Buddhist Upanishads where non-dual teachings are stated in unequivocal terms

>>18669051
Are you retarded? Why are you pretending I am claiming Jesus taught non-dualism?

>>18669060
>>18669008

>>18669071
>There are people who say that Jesus taught non-dualism too.

>>18669030
So true. Diotima > Neurotic world-weary princelings.

>>18668694
The Shadow of the Dalai Llama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in m Tibetan Buddhism. Original is in German, but the authors put an English translation online.
>English PDF
http://lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/TheShadowOfTheDalaiLama/TheShadowOfTheDalaiLama.pdf
>English html
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm

>>18660681
There is a thread about this bullshit like every day.

>>18668694
Isn't that the entire point? If you try to understand it, you understand it less? It's kind of non-dualism. I have no idea how it works practically. Sounds like it makes sense if you're a monk though since things still get provided for you.

>>18669678
People suffer, people get hurt and need serenity and peace.

Perhaps you're getting Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zen mixed up.

>>18660715
Bro your post put me in physical pleasure, wtf. I love God.

>>18660851
Great take, but don't forget what doesn't incarnate.

>>18669030
We are the Bad Boys of /lit/

Anyone ever work a lot meditating :
Breathing in I recognize the impermanence of all dharmas, breathing out I recognize the impermanence of all dharmas. MN118

>>18669055
You're wasting your time. He's not here to discuss the chronology of monism in Hindu metaphysics, he's an abortion from the guenon threads here to fling shit.

>>18660681
>Entire premise of Buddhism is that there is an eternal cycle of reincarnations where you are bound by karma.
this isn't right

>>18669735
Aren’t they all the same thing?