Can Buddhist emptiness (śūnyatā) offer a way to transcend Western nihilism?

>transcending western nihilism by adopting a nihilistic death cult (east)

Why is it for some Westerners (like OP) so hard to accept their own Western culture and tradition (Christianity, prayer and contemplation)? Why do they always look to the East to search for some completely foreign tradition?

>>24514784
In the West, Christianity hasn't really helped with the modern crisis of meaning. If anything, it's made things worse. Its focus on a distant, personal God and a strict split between the divine and the world ends up feeling disconnected from life. Instead of uplifting the human spirit, it often encourages guilt, denial of the self, and a kind of spiritual emptiness. That's pretty different from the more integrated, life-affirming perspective you see in Buddhist thought, which emphasizes unity and direct experience. And when it comes to dealing with modern science or the complexities of human consciousness, Christianity just doesn't seem equipped for it.

Social Darwinism and Universal Darwinian panendeism is a better option

>>24514820
Your view on Christianity is very limited, if that’s how you see it. The Christian god is neither distant nor separated from this world. Nothing about Buddhism is life affirming, wtf.
Christianity is completely compatible with modern science which is proven through the many scientists who are believing Christians.

>nihilism but western :|
>nihilism but eastern :O

>>24514758 (OP)
Sounds completely retarded. Very little difference between this and a superficial brand of scientific atheism. Perhaps try thinking a little and not reposting Instagram stories from middle-aged white women who took a little too much DMT at a concert that one time.

>>24514820
there's only one kind of Christianity that has no such issues philosophically, with God as pure form (spirit), Existence-Itself, with everything created being a matter-form composite, the human intellect being pure form (and so can abstract other forms without matter), all creation being radically contingent on God and hence nothing else subsists in itself, God being the continuous efficient cause of all phenomenal existence at every point in time, theosis as the achievement of perfect self-similarity to God's wholeness (holiness), etc. but not a lot of people know or practice it. it's the philosopher's Christianity and it's hiding in plain sight.

maybe
>>24514779
Nietzsche didn't achieve nirvana, and his works are mostly homoerotic bullshit. He is right about modernism tho.

>>24514962
Where can I read about this?

>>24514992
sound like basic platonism to me.

>>24514983
I can think Buddhism is a death cult without being a Nietzschean, you know.

>>24514784
The East also looks West. It's a natural phenomenon when cultures are exposed to each other. The more exposure, the more opportunities and interest to look elsewhere. This is part of the natural progression of Western civilization in particular, because it's so cosmopolitan. Belief systems all become nothing more than merchandise in the bazaar.

>>24515204
>bazaar
Speak English, retard. Where do you live? Saudi Arabia?

>>24514992
>>24515005
yes this is just thomism. for buddhists I'd say look into existential thomism.

>>24515263
London

>>24515204
But that’s not what I mean. What you describe is synergy, fruitful exchange. What I meant is that people completely reject one for the other.

>>24515316
Makes sense, Mohammed. Such types as yourself shall never master the Queen’s English without such jarring interpolations from the barbarabic tongue.

>>24514784
>>24515361

These people don’t care about truth, they care about loyalty. When someone turns to Eastern traditions, it shatters their fragile illusion that Christianity is the one valid path. So they lash out, not from wisdom, but from wounded pride. It’s not a question—it’s a demand: "Why won’t you obey your assigned religion?" That’s not spirituality, that’s a slave mentality dressed up as heritage. They’re not defending prayer or contemplation, they’re defending the cage they’ve mistaken for meaning.

Christianity didn’t rise by illumination—it rose by domination. Burning, silencing, absorbing anything that threatened its monopoly. That same insecure energy still haunts its defenders today. They can’t comprehend someone choosing another path unless it’s framed as rebellion, because deep down they know—if people were truly free to seek—they’d leave. And that terrifies them. Not because it's false, but because it exposes what they were too afraid to question.

>>24515632
This. I'm tired of all these "christians" who constantly break balls of anyone who has even the slightest interest in Eastern doctrines, they just want you to join their Snake handling church.

>>24514758 (OP)
Because experiencing emptiness in Buddhism is not the final word, one who realizes emptiness dwell in the luminous clarity of the Primordial Mind

>>24514784
The Western tradition has always looked to the East since before Socrates and Plato.

>>24514779
>>24514950
It's very difficult to make an accurate generalization about Buddhism. It's many things.

>>24514962
A lot of people practice this, it's just the Catechism of the Council of Trent. A sophisticated mind is neither a requirement for understanding, nor is understanding the same as knowledge of scholastic arguments (though this can help you to get it). While reason accounts for human awareness of God, it is inherently limited, but the love of truth bears fruit rather in the theological virtues, especially charity. Similar remarks could be applied to Buddhism. Discursive teaching for Gautama was nothing more than "skillful means" to direct your attention away from what is impermanent.

>>24514779
>nihilistic death cult (east)

Yet the whole point of the middle path is to avoid wrong views such as annihilationism.

>>24514758 (OP)
https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/theologi/2012-v20-n1-2-theologi0851/1018862ar/
https://philitt.fr/2021/01/11/francoise-bonardel-la-modernite-ne-survivra-pas-au-depassement-du-nihilisme-quelle-a-elle-meme-nourri/

>>24514758 (OP)
>>24517138
https://www.amazon.com/Buddhist-History-West-Studies-Religious/dp/0791452603

>>24514758 (OP)
>filename
every time.

>>24514758 (OP)
I just hopped on 4chan to ask a question that would be answered by an answer to your question.
But 4chan trully fell to normalfaggots.
>Can Buddhist emptiness (śūnyatā) offer a way to transcend Western nihilism?
Well, first of all, not even Buddhists think that knowing about the sunyata leads to bodhi, since they don't have (just to name a few things) bodhicitta, nor they are nirvid, nor udvega. It just leads to vipasyana. Pratityasamutpada is more what you are looking for (probably), which is not nihilistic per se (more likely solipsistic).
In other words, being aware of the sunyata doesn't offer any "way to trascend" anything.
That said, if you wanna trascend Western nihilism you can literally trascend it through Western nihilism. Just read "An Experiment in Nihilism" by Mitchell Heisman.
>>24514779
Buddhism isn't nihilistic.
Read (at least) 101 Zen Stories.
>>24517042
Mind is Buddha.
>>24514784
And yet they are so ignorant about it.
They keep talking about how Christianity is le bad or le good, they keep briefly naming Western currents like Darwinism and Thomism and Platonism and (probably) Huxley, but I don't really see them actually talking about the tenets of Buddhism, only buzzwords, nor do I see them briefly naming other Eastern philosophies to show how, actually, you gotta study the I Ching to make sense of the world (which is something that Buddhists claimed).

Do not think that the normalfaggots are honest, anon.
The normalfaggots claim to be something exotic (i.e. unaccessible to many) to appear superior. But the normalfaggots do so only as a facade. The normalfaggots draw their conclusions from society: the society where they exist lives rent free in their minds; the society is the one to determine what is exotic and what is not; the society determines what the normalfaggot must learn to appear superior.

>>24517071
This is not true. The 8-fold path is for equanimity in the face of annihilation. The Buddha understood the truth.

>>24518075
Samsara is not annihilation. Action begets action indefinitely, the Eightfold Path is for non-action in the face of that.

>>24517626
show me the sound of one hand.

>>24518380

>>24518171
The Buddha was not interested in samsara. The 4 Noble Truths says nothing about it.

>>24518777
It's the first noble truth. Samsara = dukkha

The concept of sunyata is often misunderstood.
It means, there is no independently existing 'thing', all things exist only in relation to other things.
phenomena arise not from an essence but from the interdependent web of conditions.
No you might be wondering how is that "empty or nothing or even an eternal truth"
The truth: what appears to be "reeeaaaal" like distance, force, substance is a dependent (DEPENDENT) illusion. Ex. In classical physics gravity (which applies to huge and heavy objects) follow the inverse square law, in string theory (which applies to particles at molecular level) the opposite may apply true. where as the distance between these particle grow the strength may increase (just like a string which stretched has its force).
Another clear example is how thoughts arise, phenomena don’t arise from themselves or others they arise interdependently and have no inherent origin (think thoughts during meditation)
Basically the whole world could be a dependent illusion.
Nagarjuna's 70 stanzas on emptiness is a good place to start.

>>24518785
>The First Noble Truth in Buddhism is dukkha, which means that life is inherently unsatisfactory and involves suffering, pain, and dissatisfaction.

Where do you see samsara in that? Dukkha is about suffering in life. It says nothing about an "afterlife" or a cycle of rebirth.

>>24519322
>And what is the origin of suffering? It’s the craving that leads to future lives, mixed up with relishing and greed, taking pleasure wherever it lands. That is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving to continue existence, and craving to end existence. This is called the origin of suffering.
>SN 22.104