Thread 24651291

Whats the deal with Buddhism?

>Theravada
A very life denying iteration in which the biggest plotholes were intentionally left unfilled by the Buddha because they weren't "productive" to know or understand. You know, questions like does one continue to experience in parinibbana after becoming an Arahant? Theravadins will often tell you no, but if thats the case, its just death.

>Mahayana
I'll admit, Madhyamaka in particular is deeply interesting, especially because you can observe, right now, some of the fundamentals of Buddhist emptiness, like the interdependence of all objects. But a lot of it is genuine cope, especially when you get into Vajrayana. China, which produced many major Sutras Mahayana practitioners follow and study, also produced a ton of just straight up slop that was written with a clear agenda.
Vajrayana (the esoteric subset of Mahayana)is worse, they have oracles who, to this day, are adding on new rules, or adding exceptions to pre-existing rules because of dreams they had. Originally Tibetan monks couldn't handle money, or accept money for teachings until a Tulku had a dream and said it was fine, which Patrul Rinpoche specifically points out as a critical turning point for corruption in their system.

Many Chinese practitioners for example don't eat onions, garlic, etc because a sutra written 800 years after the Buddha's death, but is still attributed to the Buddha, says that eating non-bland food will trigger you to become overly attached to life and that you should give up adding flavor to your meals. The Mahayana cope for this is that the original Buddha stored all of his teachings in an alternate dimension for the "real practitioners", which is why he taught none of it originally. That, historically, has to be one of the biggest copes in human history. Like just admit a lot of this shit was made up by randoms after the fact.

Literature?

I went to rural Thailand and there were a bunch of big statues of the Buddha built by rich Chinese guys and I went to a temple filled with monkeys and a 1980s mannequin depiction of hell where demons fried sinners in a wok and I went to a cave were mummies lived in open caskets and oozed into the rock.

Shut the fuck up and hit the meditation mat lil bro

>>24651319
Sutras?

>>24651408
Bless you.

>>24651291 (OP)
>the biggest plotholes were intentionally left unfilled by the Buddha because they weren't "productive" to know or understand. You know, questions like does one continue to experience in parinibbana after becoming an Arahant?
That's because theravada is just zen but with an actual tradition and rules for how to progress.
>A very life denying iteration
It's words that are life-denying, wordcel.

>>24651291 (OP)
>The Mahayana cope for this is that the original Buddha stored all of his teachings in an alternate dimension for the "real practitioners", which is why he taught none of it originally
Any Buddhists or more knowledgeable people that can confirm this lmao?

>>24651656
Basically every word of the OP is a lie

>>24651660
A lot of it is, but that part is actually true. It was a counter to the fistful of leaves sutta or whatever, which was one of the earlier texts where the Buddha states that everything he had to teach that was useful on the path, he had taught, and he didn't hold anything back.
Mahayana Buddhists needed a way to justify the continuous popping up of accepted Sutras, hundreds, sometimes more, years after the Buddha's death. So they used the naga realm theory, where the Buddha left his "advanced teachings" with the Nagas in another dimension until practitioners became sufficiently advanced enough to understand them.

Basically it was their metaphysical justification for constantly modifying and or adding on to the Buddha's already existing teachings and in a way kind of attack his own claim in the early Suttas that he taught everything there is worth knowing.

>>24651660
It's not. The OP is correct. But those are not plotholes left unfilled. There is a certain amount of reading between the lines that is assumed by the Buddha. You don't need everything spelled out for you. Like any good literature, use your brain. Of course if there is anatta, there is no soul, no self and hence no afterlife or reincarnation of any kind. This is obvious to anybody who has "discernment" within Buddhism. And somethign clearly understood by Zen practitioners.

>>24651660
OP is correct about that.
Mahayana Buddhism implies that Buddha hid some teachings in pure lands that were accessed later by monks. Or that it's some secret teaching, revealed 800 years later, that he in the beginning expounded to his closest disciples.
The same with Vajrayana - which deems itself as even more secret that Mahayana, something that in the beginning was said to Buddha's one or two most advanced disciples and that was made public about 1500 years later - and the Tibetan iteration of Vajrayana, where they have termas (texts left in hidden places by Padmasambhava for later discovery) that are nothing else but means to introduce new ideas and methods into the religion and to legitimize one's own practice.

>>24651660
As someone that grew up Buddhist, thats the major thing OP got right. In the mahaparinibbana sutta, the Buddha firmly states he has no teachers fist, meaning he withheld absolutely nothing from his students. The later Mahasamghikas which are theorized to have led to the creation of Mahayana, had to come up with justifications for the creation of major sutras.

These three things were:
Upaya (skillful means, meaning that even if the Buddha didn't teach these sutras directly, its irrelevant because they are still in line with the Dharma and thus valid, which is highly, incredibly debatable).
Trikaya (The three body doctrine. Dharmakaya, Samboghakaya and Nirmanakaya).
Naga Realms / Pure lands (the cope part).

From a purely historical perspective, Mahayana is literally a giant cope because some monks playing loose and fast with the rules and making stuff up got kicked out after the schism. Its all just a huge post-hoc justification for the existence of their school.

From their metaphysical perspective, all of this is irrelevant.

>>24651772
>he has no teachers fist
This was just meant to emphasize that he was self-awakened.
>meaning he withheld absolutely nothing from his students
There are many other places in the suttas where he explicity says there are things he does not say if they are not helpful (even if they are true). Every response has to be calibrated to serve the goal.

>>24651823
>This was just meant to emphasize that he was self-awakened.
Its not actually. The teachers fist was a common metaphor for hidden knowledge in that era, and was used repeatedly throughout the suttas and EBTs.

>There are many other places in the suttas where he explicity says there are things he does not say if they are not helpful (even if they are true). Every response has to be calibrated to serve the goal.
This doesn't help Mahayana's case, at all, actually.

>>24651879
Sorry I thought you meant he had no teachers first (typo).

But the point stands that he did not believe in telling the truth if it was not helpful (presumably for the particular audience). Why wouldn't this argue for Mahayanist thought and esoteric Buddhism in general?

>>24651291 (OP)
Calling them plotholes is kind of like saying it's a plothole that in the Sun Also Rises Jake Barnes is never stated as missing his penis.

>>24651326
>built by rich Chinese guys
you think they can't build their own big statues? the temples in thailand rake in billions of dollars a year. their monks scandals involve embezzlement to the tune of tens of millions of dollars

>>24651928
Because that would mean Mahayana wasn't helpful.

On a historical level, we already know Mahayana is not represented by the literal Buddha, the first Sutra wasn't until like 150-200 years after the earliest Suttas, thats a long game of telephone.

On another level, I doubt that the Indian and Chinese people 200 years later who started the Naga/alternate dimension aplogetics were so radically different that they alone were uniquely suited to understand and practice Mahayana, and I sincerely doubt they believed it themselves, and if they did they were probably high off their own shit.

All I know is that you won’t catch me taking bodhisattva vows. Fundamentally cucked behaviour.

>>24651945
I was directly told that the ones in this area were built by rich Chinese guys.

>>24651291 (OP)
all this gobbledygook was written hundreds of years after buddha, really makes you think

>>24651987
and the first suttas were written down hundreds of years after the death of the buddha. we don't know exactly what he taught and what words he used, but we are all entitled to interpret it to fit our needs.

>>24652002
>self-view

>>24652270
Not quite. The first major batch of Suttas were written 40-60 years after his death. The oldest Sutra was about 250-300 roughly.
New research says that parts of SN were written possibly just a couple of decades after his death, and there would still have been practitioners alive that met him personally.

You're right about interpreting it to fit your needs, because the first Sutra didn't come about until after the schism when a bunch of people were kicked out of the Buddhist council for suggesting wild shit.
Does this mean the Suttas are perfectly accurate? No, but its completely logical to assume they are much more so than the Mahayana Sutras.

The tantras/kangyur are without a doubt fan fiction however

>>24652295
>SN
which parts? is that Samyutta or Sutta Nipata?

>>24652295
I'm not sure it matters, because written texts do change over time. Unless we have a literally 2,500 year old manuscript...

>>24652287
Better than a perverse attachment to the mere concept of "compassion."

>>24651291 (OP)
orthodox theravada is fucked
they did all sorts of autistic shit like reifying ultimate dharmas in the abidhamma and losing themselves in commentaries that went agaisnt the suttas like the visuddhimagga. Reading the sutta nipata and going to the aforementioned can make the difference be seen clearly.

>>24652295
They say that some secret teachings were transmitted directly to Maha Kassapa and so would not show up in any sutta anyway. Those secret teachings rely on an oral chain of transmission.

>>24651319
go suck up some shit with those monkey lips you subhuman nigger janny

>>24651681
>>24651693
>>24651705
>>24651772
Most Mahayana sutras are framed as teachings given by the Buddha to the same monks found in the Pali Canon, like Shariputra, Ananda, Subhuti, and Upali, so they don't contradict statements that the Buddha hid nothing. The myth of Nagarjuna receiving sutras from the nagas specifically refers to the Prajnaparamita sutras, and is basically symbolic of the idea that he perfectly understood and explained their meaning, it's not a myth recounted in the sutras themselves to give them validity.

the real question is what the fuck is going on with pure land traditions

>>24653754
Guarantee enlightenment in the next life with one simple trick. It’s hardly even Buddhism, more like ersatz Catholicism where purgatory is pleasant

>>24653754
Practice is based on Buddhanusmrti, or basically recalling the Buddha's characteristics. Its actually the literal very first Mahayana Sutra written, and the Amitabha sutras are basically expansions of it, and then utilized to create an entire tradition.

Its actually the OG Mahayana practice. Predates Zen/Chan. Going to Amitabha's Pure Land is basically like going to Buddha bootcamp.

Its recommended by Nagarjuna himself for people who don't have the right circumstances.

>>24653764
It doesn't guarantee enlightenment in the next life, it just guarantees you'll meet Amitabha and spend significantly less eons trying to become a Buddha. Usually people hit the mid-grade Bhumis in the Pure Land, or that is what is taught typically.

If you go to the Pure Land and immediately become a Buddha, you were already incredibly close anyways.

>>24653766
Expanding on this, Pure Land practitioners recite the nianfo/nembutsu, not only with the goal of going to the pure land, but also achieving buddha recitation samadhi.

Funnily enough, most major Zen/Chan monastics throughout history end up eventually converting to this practice instead.

>>24651291 (OP)
>because you can observe, right now, some of the fundamentals of Buddhist emptiness, like the interdependence of all objects
This isn’t true, both because one (1) empirical perception doesn’t allow us to tell if any given object is actually dependent on any other, it only allows us to gather data on the basis of which we can make inferences, and (2) interdependence explicitly makes a claim about “all” phenomena being interdependent but we dont have access to all phenomena but many remain beyond the range of our perception or current scientific instruments, so we can at best only fallibly infer that some of the phenomena within the range of our perception are dependent on each other, but causality and ontological/existential dependence cannot be directed observed. So, the interdependence of all objects may very well be wrong.

In saying that emptiness is observed one is actually applying an arbitrary set of assumptions and priors to one’s experience which can itself alternately be explained in a variety of other ways, without relying on these arbitrary assumptions.

So, should I follow Buddhism or not? Samsara is infact quite tiring, and the aeons it has gone on will keep expanding.

>>24653820
>In saying that emptiness is observed one is actually applying an arbitrary set of assumptions and priors to one’s experience which can itself alternately be explained in a variety of other ways, without relying on these arbitrary assumptions.

This is completely acceptable unless you're a pyrrhonist and just give up all together, thougheverbeit

>>24653766
The oldest manuscript of a Mahayana sutra is the 8,000 line Prajnaparamita, and it had more commentaries written on it in India than any other sutra. Prajnaparamita is the foundation of Mahayana.

>>24653766
>spend significantly less eons trying to become a Buddha
It guarantees you a basically infinitely long life in Sukhavati to complete the bodhisattva path, it's still very long. The other name of Amitabha, limitless light, is Amitayus, limitless life.

Bunkertranny thread, DO NOT ENGAGE

>>24654040
meds

>>24654048
Tranny mad

>>24654051
>thread about a religion
>TRANNY, BUNKER THREAD
>TRANNY MAD TRANNY TRANNY
Right... good luck out there lil bro

>>24653842
Samsara is not a part of Buddhism. It's just an Indian thing that predates Buddhism. Buddha never was interested enough in it to either prove it or disprove it. He just thought it was inconsequential.

>>24653754
>>24653764
>>24653766
Does anybody know if Mahayana and Pure Land emerged in response to Christianity and Islam starting to spread eastwwards into Asia?

>>24651291 (OP)
I will rape this kitten

>>24651291 (OP)
I will rape this kitten.

>>24654584
Seems to have developed rather independently and prior to any serious spread of Christianity/Islam based on sutra dating.
What is interesting is how Madhyamaka philosophy, intentionally or otherwise, seems to affirm Agrippa's Trilemma.

Nagarjuna lived about 150 years after him and there was greek cross pollination in Northern India at that time.

>>24651291 (OP)
It is a philosophy and a school more than a temple

>>24651987
>that would mean Mahayana wasn't helpful.
But the Mayahanists would say what wasn't helpful in the Buddha's time is now helpful or became helpful later

>>24651291 (OP)
i like this cat

>>24653772
>Funnily enough, most major Zen/Chan monastics throughout history end up eventually converting to this practice instead.
Those who need to be institutionalised go to institutions. Those who do not need psychiatric care become plumbers, or carpenters, or farmers, or potters. The monastery is the demonstration of the attachment of a practice: you don't need crutches, walk.