/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16536227]

So, while every major religion promises life after death, only buddhism focuses on detaching yourself to escape the cycle of rebirth? So Buddhists want to stop existing? What life that bad in central asia to influence this thought?

[Anonymous No.16536230]

read schopenhauer

[Anonymous No.16536243]

>>16536227
>buddhism
>religion
Choose one.

[Anonymous No.16536255]

>>16536243
religion

[Anonymous No.16536258]

All religious traditions acknowledge that the world is imperfect. Where they differ is in the explanations which they offer to account for this imperfection and in what they suggest might be done about it. Gnostics have their own -- perhaps quite startling -- view of these matters: they hold that the world is flawed because it was created in a flawed manner.

Like Buddhism, Gnosticism begins with the fundamental recognition that earthly life is filled with suffering. In order to nourish themselves, all forms of life consume each other, thereby visiting pain, fear, and death upon one another (even herbivorous animals live by destroying the life of plants). In addition, so-called natural catastrophes -- earthquakes, floods, fires, drought, volcanic eruptions -- bring further suffering and death in their wake. Human beings, with their complex physiology and psychology, are aware not only of these painful features of earthly existence. They also suffer from the frequent recognition that they are strangers living in a world that is flawed and absurd.

Many religions advocate that humans are to be blamed for the imperfections of the world. Supporting this view, they interpret the Genesis myth as declaring that transgressions committed by the first human pair brought about a “fall” of creation resulting in the present corrupt state of the world. Gnostics respond that this interpretation of the myth is false. The blame for the world’s failings lies not with humans, but with the creator. Since -- especially in the monotheistic religions -- the creator is God, this Gnostic position appears blasphemous, and is often viewed with dismay even by non-believers.

Ways of evading the recognition of the flawed creation and its flawed creator have been devised over and over, but none of these arguments have impressed Gnostics. The ancient Greeks, especially the Platonists, advised people to look to the harmony of the universe, so that by venerating its grandeur they might forget their immediate afflictions. But since this harmony still contains the cruel flaws, forlornness and alienation of existence, this advice is considered of little value by Gnostics. Nor is the Eastern idea of Karma regarded by Gnostics as an adequate explanation of creation’s imperfection and suffering. Karma at best can only explain how the chain of suffering and imperfection works. It does not inform us in the first place why such a sorrowful and malign system should exist.

Once the initial shock of the “unusual” or “blasphemous” nature of the Gnostic explanation for suffering and imperfection of the world wears off, one may begin to recognize that it is in fact the most sensible of all explanations. To appreciate it fully, however, a familiarity with the Gnostic conception of the Godhead is required, both in its original essence as the True God and in its debased manifestation as the false or creator God.

[Anonymous No.16536260]

This >>16536243

The vast majority of religions are simply social management and control, and anything having to do with philosophy or inquiry as to a deeper story of life is only a distraction to the mandate of the preservation of the elites in the religious society at the expense of that society itself.

[Anonymous No.16536281]

>>16536227
>central asia
>>16536243
religion
>>16536260
define and give examples for
>elites in the religious society
please anon.

[Anonymous No.16536295]

Most religions from the Indian subcontinent presume the reality of samsara (the cycle) and have some stance on what it is and what to do about it. Some are more positive or negative, some believe in individual salvation while others believe you ought to save others, some link salvation with enlightenment exclusively while others have multiple paths and/or a moral path to salvation, including aiding the salvation of others. Buddhism is no different, it's more a term for many different traditions than a single tradition.

>So Buddhists want to stop existing?
Some, but there are mystics in every religion who feel the same way arguably. There are lots of religions in which the mystic current is named for something like "annihilation," the annihilation of the false self through oneness with the self of God. But there are personalist and soul-realist strains in all these religions as well.

In general though the nihilism reading is a lousy understanding of Buddhism, and of Hinduism and mysticism in general too. But to be honest you do have to also realize that most religions aren't being accessed at the philosophical level and interrogated for systematic coherence and clarity by their everyday believers, or even their more sincere believers. Most of them will take the general propositions of the faith, like that Jesus is love, or that suffering is only transitory, and apply those in cases where they bring comfort, and then mix in a bunch of folk elements (in practice many Indians who nominally should want to "escape samsara" are perfectly fine with the idea of reincarnating, even fascinated by it, and with the idea of living good future lives etc, sometimes to the point of being quite materialistic and selfish). And they'll otherwise live a secular life.

If you want Buddhism or Hinduism or any other philosophical or religious system to make sense you are going to have to dive deep into it and find the people within it who took it to its limits in their efforts to glimpse its real core truths, and in my biased opinion, they are often considered heretical by majority and the official institutions and dogma within their faiths. Does anyone really care about a contemporary ho-hum Sunni's opinion on Al-Hallaj or the church's opinion on Eckhart's orthodoxy, or the early church's stance that Origen and Justin Martyr and Clement all had heretical ideas? Who gives a shit

[Anonymous No.16536332]

>>16536258
Nobody asked you to write all that trivial nonsense.

[Anonymous No.16536368]

>>16536227
Buddhism promises an end to life.

[Anonymous No.16536374]

>>16536260
uhhhh go to college or church, at least SOMETHING

[Anonymous No.16536404]

>>16536227
not only buddhism. some strands of hinduism do also.

[Anonymous No.16536416]

>>16536227
Free from the cycle of rebirth just means you dont reincarnate on earth no more and instead move on to a higher form of life.

[Anonymous No.16536449]

>>16536258

[Anonymous No.16536470]

>>16536332
Quite the opposite, I was urged to post this excerpt as OP claims that Buddhism is the sole religion that employs the ideas of reincarnation and nirvana as fundamental tenets, which is not the case as you can see.

[Anonymous No.16536869]

>>16536416
No. You end.

[Anonymous No.16536882]

>>16536227
>implying life was ever good anywhere
Cope

[Anonymous No.16536889]

>>16536882
>better to have never been
why doesn’t this benatar faggot just gas himself already seriously

[Anonymous No.16536927]

>>16536869
“Man’s destiny is to rise from the lowest Sphere—the Earth—to the Higher. Thus he can first attain the psychic state of Intelligent and good men; thence to the state in which he thinks more of his inner condition than of his personality; this is the Higher Psychic State: then comes the Holy State, when he has lost all tastes and desires and has commenced on the path towards Reunion; then the Super-Holy State where his lower Self has lost all Affinity with the senses. These are the first four States of Evolution. When they have been mastered he reaches unity with the Highest Occult Hierarchies who help onwards the evolution of humanity, and he has Cosmic Self-Consciousness with the Buddhic World.

“Then comes the Innate Christos State, the Sphere of the Divine Flame, the dwelling place of the highest Angels in the Region of the Pitris and Devas. And, finally, the Realm where he reaches the highest possible ecstatic trance-like State of Supreme Consciousness, where he loses the ordinary Consciousness of every individuality, including his own. He is then at the threshold of the great Choice. The unreal has been transformed into conditionless Reality, and the realities of the Earth and all the Astral Worlds have vanished in their own nature into thin and non-existing air. Absolute Truth has conquered relative truth; he has reached the state of self-analyz ing reflection, and the absolute consciousness of the personality is merged into the impersonal Ego, which is above illusion in every sense. Thence he can emerge, and, assuming an ordinary appearance, teach men. These incarnations, which take place but very occasionally, may be conscious as well as unconscious, so far as the realization by himself of his own high status is concerned when he dwells in a human body for a time. Or, he can go forward and reach a state of consciousness which is beyond all description and all human comprehension. He is free to choose, even as every human being is free to do so in a lesser way.”

http://www.thegoldenstar.org/vision11-page7.html

[Anonymous No.16536930]

>>16536889
We are 100% dying already. What remains debatable now is whether you can justify to cause new life

[Anonymous No.16536958]

>>16536927
no one cares about your blog

[Anonymous No.16537490]

>>16536227
Cringe

[Anonymous No.16537506]

>>16536227
>So Buddhists want to stop existing?
where do I sign up

[Anonymous No.16537838]

>>16536470
If the suffering of the world genuinely bothers that much that you need to invent a hierarchy of deities to account for it then you are a faggot, if you weren't a whiny little bitch you would have taken the nondualism pill

[Anonymous No.16537942]

>>16537506
At the bottom of a cliff. Do a flip.

[AQ helper No.16538032]

>>16536227
read MahaPrajnaParamita-Sastra by Nagarjuna

[Anonymous No.16538057]

Existence remains after the cycle is stopped. Nirvana isn't non-existence, it's freedom from all restraint. Big, small, existing, non-existing, freedom from it all. So, if we're being super vague, yes Buddhism promises "life" after death.

Jainism, for what its worth, also has a similar end, but the Jainist ideal is much different from Buddhist Nirvana and is sort of closer to becoming a God.

[Anonymous No.16538094]

>>16537506
>>16536869
It's not to stop existing, it's more of entering a state of permanent bliss.

[Anonymous No.16538142]

>>16537838
>he takes the gnostic mythos this literally and only sees the superficial characterizations
let me break it down for you, retard:

monad/one = all encompassing base of existence equivalent to brahman, the tao, etc

aeons = monad "expanding" its fully realized and eminent qualities into eternal perfection

sophia = always the last of the aeons in each cycle, most likely is supposed to involve some sort of self inquiry, as it tries to make an image of the monad

demiurge = ego, unrealized self. creates duality and self consciousness as an "object" in the hegelian sense

the self consciousness must achieve self realization in order to gain unity with the monad, or fail over and over again until it does

[Anonymous No.16538158]

>>16538094
Who will experience the bliss?

[Anonymous No.16538173]

>>16538158
Your soul.

[Anonymous No.16538204]

>>16538142
>Tries to persuade someone
>Immediately throws out insults
I have a feeling that your post isn't for anyone but yourself.
Antagonistic debate culture was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.16538252]

please explain to a western analytic brainlet how Buddhists reconcile (a) the notion that the self/soul/I/ego does not exist and (b) karma and reincarnation does exist... if karma and reincarnation do exist, isn't the only thing to "reincarnate" the soul? and yet the soul doesn't exist? I'm confused..

[Anonymous No.16538270]

>>16538252
Reincarnation isn’t of the soul or identity but of consciousness. And it is continuous while alive.

[Anonymous No.16538305]

>>16538094
There’s still desire in gods and bodhisatva. The aim is to cease the renewal of being

[Anonymous No.16538314]

>>16538173
Why are you in a Buddhism thread?

[Anonymous No.16538328]

>>16538270
So consciousness is different from the soul/I/personal-identity? That doesn't make sense to me

[Anonymous No.16538338]

>>16538252
It is a noble lie for the laypeople. There is nothing that transmigrates except karma and obviously that means whatever you believe is you will not remain. This means that the moral person will be the most unhappy because technically someone else will bear the fruits of his morality, and the immoral person will be most happy because someone else will bear the fruits of his immorality.

Now shut the fuck up and go support your local sangha, p*thujjana filth.

[Anonymous No.16538359]

>>16538338
so I should be a hedonist / be immoral? what's a p*thujjana? dude WHAT?

[Anonymous No.16538366]

Religion is the story of man becoming self aware. YHWH is nothing more than a primitive stating of “cogito ergo sum”
Different cultures had different solutions to the problem of mortality, and since this occurred around the time of the agricultural revolution there are many themes of natural cycles in all religion. Buddhism is nothing special, just a more personal and philosophical approach to the problem and anxiety of mortality

[Anonymous No.16538407]

>>16538328
Consciousness isn’t an individual like Chase Manhattan Bank. Consciousness is a process like Marx’s value.

Cogito ergo sum.

NOT cogito ergo ego.

[Anonymous No.16538465]

>>16536258

[Anonymous No.16538516]

>>16538407
You are unhelpful and mildly unfriendly

[Anonymous No.16538540]

>>16538252
It's like saying "how does Christianity reconcile the free will necessary for acting moral in accordance with God's will, with God's infinite knowledge which must include knowledge of the future"

The answer is that they are both conceptions that precede and coexist with the religion, so the religion has to deal with them and there is no guarantee that there is a single dogmatic solution that will satisfy, and thus there are many answers given by many people at many different times, all with varying levels of seriousness or interest in the problem (some answers are only made as formalities, because it's expected that one's theology be systematic and thus that one has something to say about every major issue, but one may not feel any special attraction to the aporia/paradox in question; even powerful thinkers may just not be interested in problems outside their area of focus).

Any good history of Indian philosophy will tell you that certain notions were taken for granted by early Indian philosophy, if not as necessarily correct, at least as "problems" to be addressed. Like it or not, reincarnation seems to have been as taken for granted to ancient Indians as the existence of gods was to most ancient peoples.

[Anonymous No.16539194]

>>16536227
Religions are made up, and buddhism is not.

[Anonymous No.16539200]

>>16536227
weird skull

[Anonymous No.16539234]

>>16538359
it frustrates me too, how much glee people on this board find in being unhelpful and rude

[Anonymous No.16539240]

>>16536227

Think of how much your life sucks. Now imagine how much worse your life could suck. Now imagine having to do that over until the sun explodes. Non-existence doesn't sound so bad now does it.

>>16536243

Retard. Buddhism is a loosely organized body of beliefs with a prophetic figure and sacred texts; it's a religion. Go fuck yourself.

[Anonymous No.16539243]

>>16536260

>Reads Herman Hesse once

I hate orientalists so fucking much. Go to Asia for fuck's sake and see that they're the same as us. There is no mystique, just a different exterior.

[Anonymous No.16539879]

>>16538252

it's EVERYONE's karma, the buddhist method is removing misidentification of the self. so the "self" is god, which you could just reduce down to one thing. the soul is more like a "subtle body" that is changing constantly, just like your regular body. the only part of you to actually have a soul is the 'god' part, the rest is illusion

[Anonymous No.16539900]

>>16536243
Buddhists literally unironically believe the Buddha could fly, had a divine eye into past lives, could travel through realms and speak with devas and ghosts, and that at the center of the world system is a giant mountain almost unfathomably big

They also believe in some mystical social credit system and you can game it to level up your next life by giving cash and food to monks

[Anonymous No.16539918]

>>16536227
It's beyond simply not existing, because not existing would be a thing within our conditioned reality.
It is pretty much negating all negations, whereas most westerners just stop at 'negating' and think it is an existentialist religion.
The most popular forms are about cultivating bodhichitta, compassion to become enlightened to save all sentient life, and practice is usually doing good deeds and honing one's selflessness.

[Anonymous No.16539932]

>>16538252
Its like a flam being transferred from one candle to the next. There is no inherent self in the flame, just burning going from one substrate to the other.

[Anonymous No.16540508]

>>16536260
But Buddhism is a form of social control. Teaches people I.e. peasants, that their world problems are rooted in an internal conflict, rather than real world material issues.

Its used as a means to placate a starving peasantry, just as Christianity in the past

[Anonymous No.16540526]

>>16536227

Religions don't promise "life after death". They promise transcendence, and buddhism is not fundamentally different, they just changed the colors a bit.

[Anonymous No.16540528]

>>16538252
in buddhism they call it rebirth for that reason
basically it refers to karma, i.e. causality, your actions leave an imprint on the world and shape it, since selfhood isn't real and only existence itself, as it were, counts as being, every subforms of being emitting karma onto themselves are thusly rebirthing
if you stand in a lake and scoop up some water in a cup, thats a person, pour it down and let it swirl around teh water in the lake, thats karma, scoop up another glass, thats the next person reborn through the new properties of existence as influenced by karma