Thread 17933197

This is a depiction of Amitābha, a principal Buddha in Mahayana Buddhism, particularly revered in East Asian Buddhism. This specific depiction, known as “Amida, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Life,” was created around 1737 and is a print by Bernard Picart.

>>17933197 (OP)
Amitābha’s whole 'muh Pure Land' paradise gig is basically Buddhist wishful thinking.

>>17933197 (OP)
Why does a supposed being of light and life look so demonic?

>>17933223
Because it being depicted by Christians to demonize it.

>>17933252
I mean eastern gods already look demonic on their own sooooo.....

>>17933201
Pure land is heretical Buddhism...

>>17933197 (OP)
The Amitabha is similar to Old Testament Isaiah prophecy about the Holy Highway. It is said that one day a Holy way will be made and the unclean shall not pass over it, but a fool can traverse it with no problems.

>>17933364
Mahayana Buddhism is an incredibly odd religion. Some schizo said "what if there were more Buddhas and they were even better" and everybody went along with it, lol. They just made up whatever they wanted like the Heart Sutra.

It would be like if Muslims just dreamt up Super Muhammad and his Mega Koran

>>17933425
every verse starts with SUPER HALAL MODE ENGAGED
Super Muhammad rides into Mecca on a flying camel with laser eyes
disintegrates idolators with MEGA TAUHID BEAM
Abu Lahab gets isekai'd into a jihad truck

add 90 extra pillars of Islam
prayer now requires backflips, 360 noscoping Qiblah
zakat replaced with HALAL TAX FRAUD
new jihad tactic: drop minarets like it's 9/11 AC-130 gameplay

>>17933425
>>17933441
And some said there's nothing good about /his/ anymore.

>>17933293
Yes, easteen gods like Jesus.

>>17933425
Shakyamuni never said "im the best worship me forever and don't question me"

>>17933201
>>17933425
buddhafields,or proto-pure lands exist in the pali canon
https://ancient-buddhist-texts.net/English-Texts/Short-Pieces-in-English/Buddhapadana.htm
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn55/sn55.024.wlsh.html
> "Take the case of another man. He is not even endowed with unwavering devotion to the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. He is not joyous and swift in wisdom and has not gained release. But he has just these things: the faculty of faith, of energy, of mindfulness, of concentration, of wisdom. Yet if he has merely faith, merely affection for the Tathaagata, that man, too, does not go to... states of woe.

>>17933425
We can be buddhas too!!!

>>17933743
altered states is so fucking good

>>17933197 (OP)
Let’s find other cultural depictions of a buddha. Here’s Tibet’s version of the same Buddha (as well as some bodhisattvas).

>>17934000
I don't know much about Buddhism, but doesn't it make sense that other people can be similarly virtuous to the Buddha? Worshipping him alone seems absurd, especially when the emphasis for a follow is on self-progress.

>>17934293
Mainly Theravada, Southeast Asian, Buddhism is like that with the worship of only one Buddha, and they don’t worship but they ‘venerate’ the Gautama Buddha as the great teacher (though it might as well be worship for the lay practitioner)

Amitabha's realm exists in consciousness.
Everything is created through mind.

It's easy to say things like "mahayana is strange/dumb/cringe"
That doesn't require any kind of learning or understanding or wisdom at all

>>17933743
what do you mean? he's beautiful!

>>17933404
Not really

>>17933223
>>17933252
>>17933293
You never read Revelation, or any of the Bible?

>>17934293
>>17934302
The interesting thing about Gautama-worship in particular is that per Buddhism he no longer exists at all. The Buddha is literally just dead. Venerating him just gives you good karma via some universal law, but he is not a conscious agent and therefore there is no entity specifically capable of caring. I think this is fascinating in how different it is from regular theism.

>>17934578
the lotus sutra teaches that sakyamuni-buddha does not really pass over into nirvana

>“O sons of a virtuous family! The lifespan that I first attained through practicing the bodhisattva path has not yet expired. It is twice as great as the number previously mentioned. Although I do not actually enter parinirvāṇa I proclaim that I do. It is through this skillful means that the Tathāgata leads and inspires sentient beings.
>“Why is this? Because if the Buddha abides a long time in this world, those who have few qualities do not plant roots of good merit, acquire poor and superficial characters, are attached to the desires of the five senses, and enter into the web of illusions and false views. If they see the Tathāgata always existing without extinction, they then become proud, self-willed, and negligent. The thought that the Buddha is difficult to meet and that he is to be respected cannot awaken in them. That is why the Tathāgata teaches through skillful means, saying:
>O monks! You should know that the appearance of the buddhas in the world is very difficult to encounter.
>“Why is this? Because some of those with little merit may not see the Buddha during the passage of immeasurable hundreds of thousands of myriads of koṭis of kalpas.
>“For this reason I say:
>O monks! It is difficult to meet the Tathāgata.
>“Hearing such words, the thought that it is very difficult to meet the Tathāgata will certainly awaken in these sentient beings. Longing and yearning for the Buddha, they will plant roots of good merit. >For this reason, although the Tathāgata does not really pass into extinction, he nevertheless says he does.

>>17934572
What makes you think I'm a Christcuck? Just because I point out the very obvious fact that eastern gods look demonic doesn't mean I worship Jews.

>>17934598
This is a radicial revision in Mahayana though. Also full of obvious cope
>Although I do not actually enter parinirvāṇa I proclaim that I do
>although the Tathāgata does not really pass into extinction, he nevertheless says he does.
Literally just mental gymnastics to assert the Buddha taught the opposite of what he did, kek

>>17934617
but the buddha did teach that he passes into parinirvana, he did not teach the opposite
it's just a matter of understanding why he taught so
this is skillful means

>>17933404
>It is said that one day a Holy way will be made and the unclean shall not pass over it, but a fool can traverse it with no problems.
God provided that path
>>17934523
>The time came, he is risen. Therefore hear ye this: whiteness is the sign of his people which are of God, they are called to form one body and to do in the name of God that which is righteous and brings his people eternal life. Therefore homosexuals, which do not contribute to his people having eternal life, are in league with the enemies of God, as are jews, and non-whites who do not submit to the worship of the body of God.

>>17934622
Mahayana has to posit that the Buddha literally just lied to justify their obviously contradictory doctrines. Obviously, the Buddha and all Proto-Buddhists understood him to have reached Parinirvana.

>>17934630
The truth is that, when Buddhism entered China, and after all the wars that occured due to Buddhism in their borders. The Chinese broke down Buddhism into multiple schools and sinicized their meaning to better fit the people so they made up a bunch of shit that fit their worldview. So that Buddhism can be integrated and coexist with the other religions of the time.

>>17934630
That's your way of understanding it as you cling to purism of outward form, saying "this is the real buddhism, this thing practiced as buddhism by Buddhists is not really buddhism, buddhism has to come from a place of authority with the stamp of buddha approval" and so on

Upaya is not lying

It's like someone obsessing over anything written by Paul not really being Christianity because he didn't know christ, even though Paul is defacto Christianity and everyone who studies Paul is studying Christianity

You can have your little dogma by yourself but it doesn't really matter

Even the Pali canon was not recorded in writing until hundreds of years after the Buddha - we have no way of knowing what the Buddha himself really said or what "proto-buddhists" truly thought with certainty.

The importance should not be placed on any kind of authenticity but on effectiveness of living practice.

In my mind, a true "buddhist" should be able to practice without even calling himself a buddhist. He should form no identities, as this is one of the links of dependent origination that lead to rebirth and suffering.

When someone can accept that a sutra like the surangama was probably originally written in China in Chinese and still accept it as buddhist teaching and apply it to his practice where he finds it helpful, and feel no need to search for historical justification for its authenticity, that person, in my thinking, is truly practicing living buddhism

>>17934676
This is the western vs eastern mindset. That’s why religion in Asia is so fluid.

>>17934608
The fuck do you mean by "demonic"? Having any weird non-human physical features? You do realize that the Romans and other european pagans also sometimes worshipped gods with multiple faces/heads (e.g Janus, Svetovit) right?

>>17934676
But there were two lineages of the canon separated by a thousand kilometers and we can compare those two lineages today

>>17934578
Long Discourses
Brahmajāla Sutta
1. The All-embracing Net of Views
“The body of the Tathāgata, bhikkhus, stands with the leash that bound it to existence cut. As long as his body stands, gods and men shall see him. But with the breakup of the body and the exhaustion of the life-faculty, gods and men shall see him no more.
The buddha is beyond range. Yes effectively you’re right, but he wasn’t annihilated per-se nor isn’t he floating around as some disembodied ghost.

>>17935167
>The fuck do you mean by "demonic"?
Evil.

>>17933197 (OP)
To me, it seems that the OP image is actually a fusion of Amitabha and Avalokitasvara iconography, perhaps due to misunderstanding.

Amitabha is often shown in the center of his pure land with a sea of Bodhisattvas and other students surrounding him, but the myriad arms and the multiple heads in order to face all directions at the same time are characteristics of one of Amitabha's two principal Bodhisattva students, Avalokitasvara or Guan Shi Yin

In east asian iconography, the buddha Amitabha or 阿弥陀 is usually just portrayed as a Buddha figure, often in meditative posture, especially in gold, and without many other elements except representations of light being emitted

The figure with a thousand arms and eleven heads is something unique to the iconography of Avalokitasvara (観世音) or Avalokitesvara (観自在), the Bodhisattva of compassion, but the two are often closely associated and so it's understandable if they could have been confused by a western outsider at an earlier point

>>17933223
because thats probably not even Amida or Amitabha but another God. Amitābha is usually just depicted as a Buddha with a swastika on his chest; he is considered in some sects to be the primordial Buddha, as in the first Buddha in the ages before Siddhartha.

the european artist who depicted the OP image likely confused Amitābha for another god, possibly Avaloketeshvara or Vajrakilaya, since those gods are depicted with multiple arms and heads

>>17935167
not to defend other anon but I have noticed that usually the multi-limbed/head thing is used more for malevolent or twisted entities in western traditions (with the exception of the slavs) than in eastern ones. trolls are particularly associated with this trait in norse mythology; picrel is a shitty drawing I made of a troll but it is more accurate to their descriptions in the lore than most drawings ive seen of them

>>17936280
>shitty drawing
It's not that bad

>>17933293
>I mean eastern gods already look demonic on their own sooooo.....
Well, a corpse nailed to a cross looks pretty evil and demonic to us too.

t.Asian

theres old paintings of jesus with 3 faces

>>17933197 (OP)
Religion is always like 'WE KNOW WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON GUISE' and then it's this mixed bag of stuff that seems to intentionally cast a wide net and contradict itself constantly
>but those guys are heretics I have the real diary by the guy who was penpals with God!
1-800-come the fuck on

For you OP

>>17936280
It's actually really good. You should draw more, Anon

>>17937728
okay fedora

>>17933223
Because you are a pearl-clutcher fag who is easily spooked.
Let me guess, you go to a mega-church every week?

>>17935837
Pure Land Buddhism is such a bizarre fanfic that it manages to ruin even basic Mahayana Buddhism (which is already very "fanfic-y").
Avalokitasvara is supposed to be the supreme cosmic soul of all boddhisatvas, one of the most powerful entities in mahayana cosmology, but somehow Pure Land's Very-Very-Special-and-Super-Awesome Amitabha Buddha is Avalokitasvara's teacher and superior.

>>17934648
>and after all the wars that occured due to Buddhism in their borders
What wars lol

>>17933425
>It would be like if Muslims just dreamt up Super Muhammad and his Mega Koran
Yeah, we call them Alawites

>>17937681
>doesn't understand the Trinity

>>17939995
dont shoot the messenger. i think most of these paintings were destroyed during the counter reformation however

It's basically buddhist-flavored Abrahamism.
Just like Christianity or Islam, you have to live in a chaste, sinless manner to then be chosen to reincarnate in a heaven ruled by a powerful god where you can live in peace.

I actually think there might be a direct correlation. Perhaps Pure Land was influenced by medieval christians and muslims in Central Asia.

>>17940014
there is no requirement to be chaste or sinless to be reborn in the pure land

the sutras teach that only a desire to be born there and mindfulness of Amitabha's name are required to be reborn in his pure land

the 18th of Amitabha's 48 vows is such:
>設我得佛 十方衆生 至心信樂 欲生我國 乃至十念 若不生者 不取正覺 唯除五逆 誹謗正法
Supposing that I attain buddhahood, if sentient beings in any of the ten directions, with firm conviction and joy, should wish to be reborn in my land, even for the space of ten thoughts, but then are not born in my land, then I shall not take true enlightenment, only excluding the five parajika offenses, and slanderers of the true dharma

So the only sins capable of making you unfit for rebirth according to the sutras are slandering the dharma, and killing your parents or an arhat, shedding the blood of a buddha, or creating a schism in the sangha

the pure land is purposely created as a place open to all people almost unconditionally, which is perfectly suited to completing the bodhisattva path yourself, without distractions, where everything is conducive of singular mindfulness of the dharma

many teachers would say that the pure lands are not truly physical places but mental states that we create for ourselves, and that anywhere you are can be the pure land if you have the right intention

>>17940235
This is like Protestantism, anon's comparison is right but for the wrong reasons

>>17940270
Why does everything have to have an analogy
Why can't they just be what they are

>>17940321
the brainlets mind can only comprehend so much. the brainlet knows that blue is blue, and red is red. but try to explain to the brainlet that purple is a mix of red and blue which creates a distinct color and he gets upset, he gets sweaty and horny and starts thinking about anime girls. eventually he will yell at you and run away to beat out his frustrations on his vienna sausage

>>17940326
Yeah but blue is like the green of reds

>>17940348
but orange is the new black