Converting to Buddhism

[Anonymous No.18729534]

I'm thinking of practicing Buddhism under one of the Tibetan lineages, but I can't quite shut of the skeptical part of my mind.

Can anyone provide a substantial critique of Buddhist philosophy/belief/practice?

[S10241875 No.18729587]

>>18729534
>but I can't quite shut of the skeptical part of my mind.
This may not be an obstacle on the path, but the basis of the path. http://siddharthasintent.org/assets/pubs/MadhyamakavataraDJKR.pdf
Skepticism is good, but not partial, but complete and absolute, then it is Prasangika. It's the same with other feelings / emotions - that poison is also a remedy.

>Can anyone provide a substantial critique of Buddhist philosophy/belief/practice?
You will only achieve endless copy-paste from the Gennonfaggot. Think with your own head!

[Anonymous No.18729624]

>>18729534
>Buddhism under one of the Tibetan lineages

[Anonymous No.18730515]

There are "buddhist" anons who see no contradiction between being a buddhist and a shitposting chantard

> "Right view, Right speech, Right conduct, Right effort. NIGGER NIGGER KEK KEK BREAKING BUCK FAGGOT FAGGOT"

[S10241875 No.18730521]

>>18730515
You do not understand, this is a Mantra.

[Anonymous No.18730523]

>>18730515
kek this is me.

[Anonymous No.18730535]

>>18729534
>Can anyone provide a substantial critique of Buddhist philosophy/belief/practice?
That's for you to decide. No one should tell you how to think about Buddhism and how to achieve enlightenment. "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

[Anonymous No.18730637]

I'm going down the Theravada route (though i do like the charm of Madhyamaka).

I can share some of the doubts/questions I've had regarding the practice if that would be helpful?

[Anonymous No.18730660]

>>18730637
You should share them.

[Anonymous No.18730738]

>>18730660

Rebirth: I get this in a momentary arising and ceasing sense, but obviously we cannot say what happens after death proper. Given anatta, obviously a soul doesn't appear in a new body as per hinduism, but if the nama (feelings, conscious, perception and mental activity) depend on the form, how do they get recycled after the form dies - i can see how the body recycles into soil, then plants, then food for an animal, but how does the conscious undergo such recycling? (this is ignoring the fact that they are essentially empty - and just dealing with the conventional description, which is still very important because it motivates the entire moral framework - if everything ends at death, then what incentive do you have to not lie, kill, steal so long as you can outrun jail, suppress guilt and so on?)

The next would be the acount of the Abhidhamma, does this actually line up with our modern understnding of the body and neuroscience? Am I to trust the speculation of Sri Lankan monks from 2000 years ago over modern techniques for exploring these exact questions? Is there a neurological Arahant?

The ineffability of sunya (emptiness) with regards to conventional experienced reality always gives me a headache. Yes I can see why time is illogical as a concept, i can see why logically there needs to be this emptiness or else conventional reality doesn't make sense (account for change, impermanence, conditional dependence) but it's just such a foreign notion tht things neither exist nor don't exist and that things are effectively just indeterminant in this way.

There's a few other things like, why is desiring Nirvana an ok desire but desiring a sandwich not? The fact that monks have to eat, sleep, shit - if they've transcended desire why are the subject to the body's whims?

Bit of a ramble, but i suppose that's what doubts are - my problem is probably that i never had a teacher to guide me through these

[Anonymous No.18730839]

>>18730515
I'm not a buddhist but I mostly agree with their metaphysics, posting on here isn't incompatible with right speech if you don't shitpost though

[Anonymous No.18730931]

>>18730515
Wellll, I reckon it's time somebody done show you the meaning of upaya. Why don't you head on over to the brahmin barn?

[Anonymous No.18730976]

>>18729534
Buddhism is self-contradicting nonsense. How can you believe the self is not real and also base your quest for enlightenment on the self escaping samsara?

[Anonymous No.18730986]

>>18730976
The self is a pretence. The pretence is real insofar as an act. To escape Samsara is to train yourself to see the pretence for what it is and what lies behind it.

[Anonymous No.18731001]

>>18730976
Because clinging to the self as the personal experiencer of sensations leads to rebirth, ageing, soofering, death, etc. When Buddhism criticizes the notion of a self it is within the context of Indian metaphysical speculation. It doesn't mean you aren't here now experiencing things. It is more about learning not to hypostatize and cling to these things and their relations to one another, including as it were the self, because none are shown to be eternal, without birth/death.

[Anonymous No.18731045]

>>18730976
It doesn't say the self is not real. I disagree with anatta (kind of) but it's not "no self", it's "not self"

[Anonymous No.18731050]

>>18730738
>if everything ends at death, then what incentive do you have to not
You seem to be using a very physical understanding of death and rebirth—which I am partial to myself for metaphor purposes, the literal recycling of energy into new containers—but karma/kamma is a major component of the explanation, specifically to answer the question you have, which is one they had in India, so karma, an Indian answer, was elaborated upon by the Buddha. There really isn't Buddhism without karma, cause and effect, or action and retribution/ripening if you like; everything done plants a seed. Byt this is the stuff of metaphysics, you won't be able to detect it with scientific instruments. Buddhism is a religion, always.

[Anonymous No.18731161]

>>18730738
For what it's worth, a lot of popular and well respected Theravada teachers treat the Abhidhamma with varying degrees of skepticism as well.

[Anonymous No.18731171]

>>18731050
I think that's where it strikes me as weird.
I get that if you do bad shit, guilty feelings will arise - hell even bad experiences like prison or taking the company of other bad people can arise.
I can see how my negative actions can affect people after my death. and this is all in a conventional sense

But given there is no self, given that phenomena are empty. ultimately karma must also be empty - a mere conventinoal tendency that is ultimately indeterminant.

I suppose a question that stumps me is if all life ceased in the universe what happens to karma and rebirth? they almost seem to lose meaning after this sort of extinction.
but they hold quite a profound meaning in the day to day experiences of my life (before death) oddly enough.

[Anonymous No.18731209]

>>18731171
>if all life ceased in the universe what happens to karma and rebirth?
It is not even possible to verify such an event in the first place since that would require life. I suppose what you might mean is what if the whole cosmos reached nirvana? I would think the most textually supported view would be that a new cycle of life lasting countless eons would begin anew, a new buddha would have to be born into that new cosmos, and so forth.

[Anonymous No.18731307]

>>18731209
>It is not even possible to verify such an event in the first place since that would require life
true, a tree doesn't even fall in a forest without someone to hear or see it. that is conditional dependence.

See for me this is where buddhism hits its sweet spot. It works for a casual explanation of phenomena physical and mental as empty and a general set of principles based on tendencies to live life in an enriching way.

I suppose the Malunkyaputta sutta doesn't answer these existential questions for good reason. they don't help with the Dhamma.

I like that Nagarjuna teaches the buddha, the dharma, the 4 noble truths are empty. It is true, even they are just a convention to deal with the reality we tend to experience in this life, they are not necessarily cosmic laws, just useful conventions like mathematics or language that help us navigate.

I think i need to spend a lot more time meditating and to join a sangha where i can air out these questions mroe.

[Anonymous No.18731360]

>>18731171
I would say, if you look at doing a bad action to someone as doing a bad action to yourself, that clears up your moral dilemma for karma.
It also clears up rebirth, just not in a very clean way for our minds with the whole "being everyone at once thing going on.

[Anonymous No.18731373]

>>18731307
I always find it helpful to revisit the literature. A lot of it is quite dense, or perhaps rather terse, and it is easy to overlook in one reading what you will end up asking for later.

[Anonymous No.18731375]

>>18731360
What about some """"victmless""" crime? Like if I lie to get a job but perform well at that job?
I've obviously broken the 5 precepts, and I'll probably feel some impostor syndrome - but if its a high paying enough job and if i get away with it, am I not better off than had i been honest and stayed unemployed?

[Anonymous No.18731383]

>>18731373
I need to read a good sutra or book on death and karma from the perspective of sunyata and anatta. i think.

[Anonymous No.18731385]

Remember that revelation precedes action. Enacting the acts of the enlightened will not lead to enlightenment. You have to perceive a road before you can tread it.

[Anonymous No.18731411]

>>18731375
Deceit can ripen very quickly. Lies usually require more lying to sustain them, embolden bigger lies that may fall harder. So as with anything else, it will have an impact eventually.
>>18731383
I am partial to hua-yan views on sunyayta eg indra's net. See Thomas Cleary for Eng. translations.

[Anonymous No.18731537]

Could anons give me some tips on compassion? Genuine and literal loving kindness feels so right and pure but it's rare for me because I tend to be a cold and irritable asshole

[Anonymous No.18731590]

>>18729534
if your an /out/ type of person Id recommend Zen on the Trail by Christopher Ives

[Anonymous No.18732383]

>>18730515
posting on chans is a unitive non-dual experience
why do you think people make effortposts anonymously, with nothing to gain? they identify with the readers of their posts, they are one, they melt into selfless egodeath nirvana

[Anonymous No.18732413]

>>18732383
4chan is literally a singularity of dukkha, it's not nirvana, it's the complete loss of agency of lesser souls who reincarnate as animals or people who use tiktok

[Anonymous No.18732512]

>>18732413
Buddhist philosophers used to write entire treatises and then go uh no that wasn't me it was Maitreya. Just so, bodhishitposters say Anonymous authored their posts.

[Anonymous No.18732669]

>>18732512
But I tell people to kill themselves all the time that's not good speech

[Anonymous No.18732693]

Funny that buddhism ends up looping back into itself
>starts with the most barebones school, Theravada's dualism, must escape the suffering of samsara to reach nibbana
>ends with the most esoteric school, Dzogchen, saying samsara is nirvana and everyone from guru to criminal is just playing there role so there's really nothing to do, everything's all good

[Anonymous No.18732697]

>>18732693
their* holy shit

[Anonymous No.18732704]

>>18732693
all religions disintegrate like that because humanity's love for the path of least attrition always wins
human nature is stronger than all gods combined

[Anonymous No.18732712]

>>18732704
Are you implying dzogchen is a false teaching?

[Anonymous No.18732717]

>>18732712
everything that makes things simpler for human beings, who are naturally evil and degenerate, is necessarily a false belief

[Anonymous No.18732739]

>>18729534
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89tiu2SEYWU

[Anonymous No.18732863]

>>18732693
Buddhism did not start with Theravada. And for that matter the Visudhimagga commentary utilized by Theravada is more recent than the prajñaparamita sutras used in Mahayana.

[Anonymous No.18732909]

>>18729534
There's not much in Buddhism for the skeptic, notwithstanding how often Buddhism is proposed as the spirituality of choice for skeptics.
Anything outside Zen is rife with brainlet dogma, and Zen itself is a big fucking buzzkill relative to what the heart truly seeks (ignore all the usual Internet Zen egomaniacs whose insecurities drive them to act all enigmatic and profound -- they're a cliche).

[Anonymous No.18732934]

>>18732909
There's not much in any religion for the sceptic, faith and scepticism don't go hand in hand.

[Anonymous No.18732954]

>wow Buddhism makes sense, everything is nothing but suffering, I should just kill myself right now *blam*
>w-wait you didn't get to the part about reincarnation!
>why do westerners always skip that part
>no chance... he's dead... the sangha will fast today!
>since when do we fast to grieve the dead?
>we don't but he was supposed to give us food

[Anonymous No.18733054]

The thing that turns me away from all religions (that I know of) is their deep-seated anti-humanism. They always have either one or a combination of::
>humans are worthless garbage and they need to be led and elevated
>the world is fucking garbage and we need to leave it behind ASAP, so look forward to the world you go to when you die
>be nice to everybody, but not when they think differently from you
>oh humans have worth? don't get excited, it's only because [deity] has a piece of them in each one of us! without it you'd be garbage all the same!
The justification for religion is that there's something inherently wrong with the world and with humans and it needs to be fixed or even scrapped altogether. For someone like me, who doesn't see anything inherently [keyword: inherently] wrong with either, religions have nothing to offer me. And frankly, fuck 'em for cultivating feelings of inherent worthlessness in everything in society at large since ancient times. No wonder nihilism naturally follows from lack of religion when you're made to believe by every physical and socio-structural entity ever that it's all garbage without [thing]. It's fucking gay.

[Anonymous No.18733062]

>>18733054
All those points are absolutely valid in every way
humanism has crashed spectacularly

[Anonymous No.18733094]

>>18733062
Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" was the final nail in the coffin for me when it comes to being open to religions. I've always had a humanist streak, but there's always been doubts in the back of my head that maybe humans really are terrible by design and religion is an easy way to fix them. Nope. Fuck that shit. For anyone who has had these thoughts like me, read the aforementioned book for just give it a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiD_hMGJPi8

[Anonymous No.18733421]

>>18729534
>Can anyone provide a substantial critique of Buddhist philosophy/belief/practice?
Major Hindu philosophers such as the mimamsaka Kumarila Bhatta and the advaitin Adi Shankara wrote extensive critiques of Buddhist philosophical positions, and some of the later Vedantic and Tantric Shaivitist philosophers wrote some critiques of Buddhist doctrine also.

Some of the most important points IMO that Shankara and sometimes also Bhatta talks about are:

1) The logical flaws involved in maintaining that uncaused (by anything other than itself) dependent origination can satisfactorily account for the existence of samsara instead of Brahman/God.
2) That the doctrine of anatta and the corresponding denial of a persisting presence consisting of witnessing-awareness doesn't actually align with our experience of phenomena, which happens in ways that show that unity of experience/awareness.

There are other important points too but a good amount are specific to one school or type of Buddhism. In order to really understand these arguments though you'd have to read through a translation of those arguments themselves, preferably also along with a book or articles that discuss them so as to provide some context. You won't get very good answers about this topic on 4chan or on a Buddhist forum. Of course every Buddhist resents ever having to admit that any philosophical critiques of Buddhism made by others is ever valid so many of them will try to gaslight you about every criticism of Buddhism ever written by Hindus, Tantrists, Daoists, Christians etc.

It's worth noting that a minority of Tibetan schools and teachers sometimes arrive at and teach a similar perspective to Hindu schools like Advaita though, such as Jonang and certain Kagyu teachers. Dzogchen is more different in theory but describes some things experientially in a very similar way. Even if you end up agreeing with the critiques of Buddhism made by others like Hindu philosophers, you could still join some Tibetan thing and potentially learn something valuable.