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I need advice on approaching an ex that will be attending the same event as I in a couple of days. I have nothing but love and respect for her but we have not been in touch for about two months. I know for a fact that she is still affecting me because I'm asking this in the first place, but I'm certain I can enjoy myself if I can remember the present reality when the time comes. How do I approach this in terms of Buddhist practice? I feel like I could prepare myself for this situation if I stay the course with meditation.
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Sep 12, 2013 18:35
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Liquid Banjo posted:I need advice on approaching an ex that will be attending the same event as I in a couple of days. I have nothing but love and respect for her but we have not been in touch for about two months. I know for a fact that she is still affecting me because I'm asking this in the first place, but I'm certain I can enjoy myself if I can remember the present reality when the time comes. How do I approach this in terms of Buddhist practice? I feel like I could prepare myself for this situation if I stay the course with meditation. You are both attending the same event, but are you going together? If not then why approach her at all? As far as practice, try sitting for 10 minutes and following the breath. After that bring the problem in your mind and see what comes up, and investigate your feelings about this.
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Sep 12, 2013 18:53
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Razage posted:You are both attending the same event, but are you going together? If not then why approach her at all? Thank you for your response. It is a smaller event where I know we'll be in close proximity throughout the evening. I believe it to be possible that I could sow seeds of a renewed friendship if she was willing and she may very well be. But I fear I have made that a possible expectation or become "attached" to the idea. Whatever it is, I would be disheartened to just ignore her or stifle my feelings of compassion in this opportunity. I feel in a bind of sorts. Liquid Banjo fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Sep 12, 2013 |
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Sep 12, 2013 19:10
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I have a question about Mantras and Karma. There are many mantras that claim to lessen or eliminate bad Karma. Then there are people that claim that using Mantras can't eliminate bad Karma at all, and that only better thoughts and deeds can improve your Karma. Is there anyone here that can clear this up, or have any other opinions, views on the matter?
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Sep 12, 2013 20:01
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Mr. Mambold posted:Dharma is not a thing... You misunderstood me, knowledge of the Dharma will eventually disappear. Paramemetic posted:I think "emptiness" hangs people up a lot. I know some teachers prefer to use other terms such as "void nature" but even that doesn't work well always. It also makes it difficult because "emptiness" is the conventional term. I don't think there's a good solution because there's no one word description in English that works, and one can only say "devoid of intrinsic self-nature"so many times before it becomes tedious. All Buddhists should take like, random Sanskrit words 101, because it's easy when you can say "Sunyata" and get the point across. 
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Sep 12, 2013 20:04
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Lordboots posted:I have a question about Mantras and Karma. There are many mantras that claim to lessen or eliminate bad Karma. Then there are people that claim that using Mantras can't eliminate bad Karma at all, and that only better thoughts and deeds can improve your Karma. Is there anyone here that can clear this up, or have any other opinions, views on the matter? Saying a mantra is doing a thought and a deed. The general idea as I understand it is that your karmic consequences will ripen. That will definitely happen. Mantra recitation accumulates merit that can mitigate some of those consequences but not stop them entirely. Depending on the type of mantras depends on the effects and such. To say definitely "saying a mantra does a thing" is a sort of esoteric position. I say certain mantras and do certain practices for certain reasons, of course. Mainly though a mantra is part of a larger pattern of behavior. If you recite the six-syllable mantra, yes maybe this will bring about compassion and so on and give you merit to reduce the impact of past misdeeds or whatever. But more importantly, if I say Chenrezig matnras, then I think about Chenrezig. This leads me to behave in a way that emulates Chenrezig. This way I become more compassionate, my mind is molded into compassionate thinking. We act how we think, our behaviors are based on our mental states and causality and so on. So if I say compassion mantras, and don't just say them, but recite them aloud, using my body, speech, and mind, then I become more compassionate. If I develop more compassion, then whatever negative karma comes to fruition, I deal with it compassionately, and it is not suffering. If someone has the negative karma to be reborn in the hell realms, but has developed bodhicitta, compassion, and lovingkindness, then they do not suffer in the hell realms. Of course they experience all the hell-things, but they got here as a bodhisattva, and they alleviate the suffering of others, and because they can do this then they are not actually suffering even in the hell realms. There are purification mantras like the hundred syllable mantra, but my understanding is that even these don't wipe away cause and effect, because that can't be done, rather, they induce the fruiting of negative karma to happen at times when it can be handled, or to happen sooner than later to get it over with, or so on.
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Sep 12, 2013 20:22
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Today I stumbled into something that helped my meditation, I expect it's common knowledge to those of you who have been practicing a while but I thought I'd share it for anyone else who's just starting out. I was trying to follow my breath as usual, I often follow my shoulders moving forward and together on my out breath and I realized at some point they must be making the opposite movement (back and apart). I spent my next few breaths trying to pinpoint it happening, having a movement to look out for that I knew was happening, just not when, really helped to keep me present.
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Sep 12, 2013 21:34
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Yeah, Buddhism was really hard to wrap my mind around when I first started reading about it. It seemed to me to be a completely useless and stupid philosophy. "Yeah everything sucks and we're all going to die and there's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing worth giving a poo poo about because you're just going to lose it all. So just stop giving a poo poo (if you can)." loving useless. But then I dug deeper and I started to "get it". Nonattachment isn't apathy or indifference. Its being mindful of how things are and how reality works, including yourself and your own thoughts and feelings, to avoid suffering. You can still love people and have goals and aspirations. Sunyata doesn't mean that nothing exists or that its all meaningless crap, it means that everything exists interdependently and that its only our limited perception that creates boundaries and separation; in truth, everything is connected and a part of one endless continuum of constant change. Anatta isn't meant to be taken as some New/Internet Atheist "we're just meat robots, deal with it  " argument; instead, it means that we're verbs, not nouns. There is no essential substance or nature to ourselves. We're a dance of patterns and processes, like how a whirlpool is a process and pattern of water in a river. We dont define the whirlpool by what its made out of (water), we define it by its pattern and behavior. The whirlpool is a verb, its something the water is doing, and thats how it is with us. We're something the world is doing. Again, verbs, not nouns.I still don't know if I've "gotten" it, but the above is how I understand these concepts.
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Sep 13, 2013 02:13
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Blue Star posted:Yeah, Buddhism was really hard to wrap my mind around when I first started reading about it. It seemed to me to be a completely useless and stupid philosophy. "Yeah everything sucks and we're all going to die and there's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing worth giving a poo poo about because you're just going to lose it all. So just stop giving a poo poo (if you can)." loving useless. I'm struggling to find the quote now, but I remember reading something the Dalai Lama said along the lines of "we know when the sun rises in the morning it will set again at night, but this doesn't mean we don't go about our day."
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Sep 13, 2013 11:43
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Blue Star posted:Yeah, Buddhism was really hard to wrap my mind around when I first started reading about it. It seemed to me to be a completely useless and stupid philosophy. "Yeah everything sucks and we're all going to die and there's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing worth giving a poo poo about because you're just going to lose it all. So just stop giving a poo poo (if you can)." loving useless. Get a little Buddha nature in your life, mate. Then get a lot, that hopelessness & nihilism is a phase you have to burn thru.
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Sep 13, 2013 12:22
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Tea Bone posted:I'm struggling to find the quote now, but I remember reading something the Dalai Lama said along the lines of "we know when the sun rises in the morning it will set again at night, but this doesn't mean we don't go about our day." He says this in a Russian documentary called Sunrise/Sunset, if that helps you find it.
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Sep 13, 2013 13:48
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Paramemetic posted:He says this in a Russian documentary called Sunrise/Sunset, if that helps you find it. Available on Netflix streaming, by the way.
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Sep 13, 2013 18:58
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Tea Bone posted:I'm struggling to find the quote now, but I remember reading something the Dalai Lama said along the lines of "we know when the sun rises in the morning it will set again at night, but this doesn't mean we don't go about our day." Mr. Mambold posted:Get a little Buddha nature in your life, mate. Then get a lot, that hopelessness & nihilism is a phase you have to burn thru I think you guys are misunderstanding me. I'm saying that I used to think that Buddhism was all nihilistic and depressing, because I was misunderstanding concepts such as anatta, sunyata, etc. I was like "So you're telling me I have no soul and everything is pointless and rotting away with every second? I already knew that!". But as I learned more about Buddhism I started to realize what those concepts really mean. I still have a lot to learn, but the point is that I don/t think Buddhism is depressing and nihilistic anymore.
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Sep 13, 2013 21:17
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So here's a question: The center that I now go to is having the Shambhala Level 1 retreat soon, and I want to go but I'm also on-call that weekend and can't find anyone to cover for me. I probably won't get a call but it's a possibility. I plan on asking the centre but I want the opinion of the people here as well. Would it be bad for me to try and go to the retreat and just keep my phone on vibrate and then if I get a call I'll have to go I guess. Or is that kind of against the spirit of the whole thing?
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Sep 14, 2013 04:13
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So I've looked into a few Buddhist centers in my area and I'm determined to check out one based around Zen and the other Shambhala. Could one explain the main distinction between these in terms of practice?
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Sep 14, 2013 18:32
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Blue Star posted:I think you guys are misunderstanding me. I'm saying that I used to think that Buddhism was all nihilistic and depressing, because I was misunderstanding concepts such as anatta, sunyata, etc. I was like "So you're telling me I have no soul and everything is pointless and rotting away with every second? I already knew that!". But as I learned more about Buddhism I started to realize what those concepts really mean. I still have a lot to learn, but the point is that I don/t think Buddhism is depressing and nihilistic anymore. Sorry, I should have made it clear I was adding to what you had said, not trying to give you advice. Paramemetic posted:He says this in a Russian documentary called Sunrise/Sunset, if that helps you find it. Thanks I'll check it out. On the subject of the Dalai Lama, I read this article on Skeptoid. While I'm aware that Brian Dunning isn't exaclty a beacon of morality, I can't help but agree with him on this. I understand the Tibet situation is complicated and I wont try to pass an opinion on that, but surely The Dalai Lama should say what ever it takes to stop these men from killing themselves? edit: forgot to link the article. Tea Bone fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 18:49
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Tea Bone posted:
That sure looks like an opinion to me.
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Sep 14, 2013 20:07
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Mr. Mambold posted:That sure looks like an opinion to me. Sorry, I meant that I wasn't going to express an opinion on weather Tibet should be free/Chinese Special Administrative Region, because it's something I don't really know anything about, but yeah that's an opinion on what The Dalai Lama said.
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Sep 14, 2013 20:42
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Liquid Banjo posted:So I've looked into a few Buddhist centers in my area and I'm determined to check out one based around Zen and the other Shambhala. Could one explain the main distinction between these in terms of practice? I don't know much, but it seems to me that the main difference is that Shambahla isn't a monastic tradition as much as Zen is (Although Zen doesn't have to be either). My recommendation is check them both out if you're unsure and find what works for you. I was pretty sold on Shambahla when I went and read up on it that I decided not to go and check Zen. I might in the future though. I think, also, that specific centers have different ways of doing things too, so if you have multiple options in your location of the same type of practice, check them out and see if one does things more your style then another one.
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Sep 14, 2013 20:59
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Tea Bone posted:Sorry, I meant that I wasn't going to express an opinion on weather Tibet should be free/Chinese Special Administrative Region, because it's something I don't really know anything about, but yeah that's an opinion on what The Dalai Lama said. I'm pretty sure we're all aware of the bulldozing and marginalizing of the Tibetan state and people being done by the Chinese, but I've also read that amidst all that there are thousands of ethnic Han who are adopting Tibetan monks as their go-to buddhist preceptors. Ch'an buddhism was nearly destroyed in China during the Maoist Great Leap forward, so there's definitely a vacuum.
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Sep 14, 2013 23:39
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Liquid Banjo posted:I need advice on approaching an ex that will be attending the same event as I in a couple of days. I have nothing but love and respect for her but we have not been in touch for about two months. I know for a fact that she is still affecting me because I'm asking this in the first place, but I'm certain I can enjoy myself if I can remember the present reality when the time comes. How do I approach this in terms of Buddhist practice? I feel like I could prepare myself for this situation if I stay the course with meditation.
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Sep 15, 2013 02:50
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Razage posted:So here's a question: The center that I now go to is having the Shambhala Level 1 retreat soon, and I want to go but I'm also on-call that weekend and can't find anyone to cover for me. I probably won't get a call but it's a possibility. I plan on asking the centre but I want the opinion of the people here as well. Would it be bad for me to try and go to the retreat and just keep my phone on vibrate and then if I get a call I'll have to go I guess. Or is that kind of against the spirit of the whole thing? I'm planning to go to that retreat too. I've been visiting the local Shambala centre over the summer and it's been nice. I don't know about your group but they're very laid back here. As long as you don't disturb the rest it's probably fine, it would be a shame to miss the entire retreat. 
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Sep 15, 2013 10:38
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I kept my phone on (ringer off) at our recent Shambhala retreat in case of emergency with the kids or something. I would suggest mentioning it to one of the directors of the weekend when you get there so they know it's a possibility but I'm sure it's no problem.
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Sep 15, 2013 12:48
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I still have trouble with the way people differentiate between nihilism and Buddhism. If you take away all the supernatural elements, you don't really seem to end up with two very different things. It makes a few more metaphysical claims than nihilism, but otherwise it just looks like a proactive and empirical approach to dealing with nihilism to me. "Here's how things are, here's how to deal with it." Especially with the way the Buddha advised people to avoid speculative ontological questions because there's no useful or meaningful answer to them. Less about whether life is depressing or not than about how to not be depressed about it.
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Sep 15, 2013 13:25
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Razage posted:So here's a question: The center that I now go to is having the Shambhala Level 1 retreat soon, and I want to go but I'm also on-call that weekend and can't find anyone to cover for me. I probably won't get a call but it's a possibility. I plan on asking the centre but I want the opinion of the people here as well. Would it be bad for me to try and go to the retreat and just keep my phone on vibrate and then if I get a call I'll have to go I guess. Or is that kind of against the spirit of the whole thing? I don't know what they'll say at your Shambhala center, but when I was staying at Blue Cliff Monastery they told us while they strongly encourage you to keep your phone off, it's understandable if you need to use it. They didn't really want you carrying it around on it all the time, but even the brothers and sisters peeked at their cell phones occasionally. I think as long as it's on vibrate, or you put it on silent and check it every hour or so for messages you should be OK.
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Sep 15, 2013 14:19
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Cardiovorax posted:I still have trouble with the way people differentiate between nihilism and Buddhism. If you take away all the supernatural elements, you don't really seem to end up with two very different things. It makes a few more metaphysical claims than nihilism, but otherwise it just looks like a proactive and empirical approach to dealing with nihilism to me. "Here's how things are, here's how to deal with it." Especially with the way the Buddha advised people to avoid speculative ontological questions because there's no useful or meaningful answer to them. Less about whether life is depressing or not than about how to not be depressed about it. I really don't know. It's true that Buddhism can be separated from supernatural elements. People often accuse Buddhism of being just as supernatural and crazy as more theistic religions, and while its true that there are certain schools that treat deities, ghosts, etc. as objectively real entities, the basic core concepts of Buddhism don't require any of that. Life is suffering, we suffer because we cling to things, we can eliminate suffering, and the way to eliminate suffering is through the Eight Fold Path. That's literally it. Go ahead and tack on anatta, impermanence, and Dependent Origination, as well. But no need for devas, asuras, hungry ghosts, or what-have-you. But as for ontological metaphysics, I think Buddhism does make such declarations. Anatta is a metaphysical declaration; it's saying that there is no permanent, eternal Self which defines our essence. Everything that we believe is the Self is just an aggregate that can be separated from the whole: the physical body, thoughts, memories, sensations, etc. Taken by themselves, none of these things is the Self, so why are they collectively called the Self? Makes no sense, except as a useful fiction to get us through our daily lives. And each aggregate is subject to change: the body goes through changes, thoughts are constantly coming and going, new memories are formed and old ones are forgotten, we may lose certain sensory perceptions such as eyesight, hearing, and so on. So where's the Self? The doctrine of anatta is basically saying we don't have souls, at least as popularly imagined by most religions and spiritual movements. There is no ghost in the machine. And heck, there is no machine, for that matter, because calling ourselves machines is just another way of trying to define a Self, and this machine is itself just a mercurial and transitory combination of shifting, flowing, impermanent aggregates. And these concepts of impermanence and anatta apply to everything, according to Buddhism. Humans (and everything we create), other animals, all organisms, planets, stars, black holes, galaxies, nebula, even universes, they all are impermanent and can be better described as dynamic processes rather than static nouns. Impermanence, anatta, Dependent Origination, and sunyata are metaphysical statements about reality, and in my humble opinion they also seem to be pretty darn accurate. There is no fundamental substance or state of being that underlies all existence: everything just sort of hangs together, everything mutually supporting everything else, floating on nothing. It is only our perception that creates the illusion of separation between different things and events, but in reality everything is connected. Now, I've heard it said that the Buddha meant for impermanence/anatta/Dependent Origination to be applied only to our subjective experience, and not meant to be a description of objective reality, but frankly I think they DO describe objective reality pretty well. I can think of no phenomenon in nature that is permanent, that exists unconditionally, that is eternal, that cannot be reduced to lesser parts, etc. Even the laws of physics may vary from universe to universe, according to some theories. But hey, maybe I'm wrong. And as for nihilism, Buddhism is way different. To me, nihilists are still under the spell of Maya. They don't see things the way they truly are. They still think that things are separate from each other, that things exist intrinsically, and that they themselves have a Self which defines their nature. Oh, they may know that there's no soul intellectually, but viscerally they still feel like there's a real Self that perceives and experiences the world and is alienated from it. They just happen to believe that this Self is annihilated upon death. Even Buddhists who don't buy into Rebirth (or Reincarnation) don't believe that, because we don't believe there even is a Self to be annihilated. And nihilists make value statements about the universe at large, which Buddhism avoids doing. Value statements such as everything being pointless and meaningless. Sure, Buddhism says that there's no Supreme Being or Ultimate Purpose, but nihilists mean it in a negative way. Also, Buddhism teaches compassion and loving-kindness towards all life, whereas nihilists seem to be clinging to their negativity as an excuse to be jerkfaces.
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Sep 15, 2013 21:23
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Cardiovorax posted:I still have trouble with the way people differentiate between nihilism and Buddhism. If you take away all the supernatural elements, you don't really seem to end up with two very different things. It makes a few more metaphysical claims than nihilism, but otherwise it just looks like a proactive and empirical approach to dealing with nihilism to me. "Here's how things are, here's how to deal with it." Especially with the way the Buddha advised people to avoid speculative ontological questions because there's no useful or meaningful answer to them. Less about whether life is depressing or not than about how to not be depressed about it. The core difference between Buddhism and nihilism is that Buddhism explicitly rejects nihilistic thinking as dualistic delusion at best, and critically harmful misunderstanding at worst. Buddhist thought bridges the Middle Way not just in behavior, practical ethics, and so on, but in terms of worldview. Buddhism bridges a gap between both metaphysical nihilism and essentialism, and existential nihilism and essentialism. It rejects metaphysical nihilism and metaphysical essentialism on the grounds that everything that exists relatively really exists, but not in any sort of tangible, permanent way, that it can be said to be possessive of existence in a meaningful way. A chair for example exists, because I can sit on it, or throw it, or otherwise interact with it. Thus it is surely real. But because it could burn up and be gone, or because the craftsman might never carve it from wood, it cannot be said to be existent as a fundamental, essential state. It is both wrong to say "there is no chair" as well as to say "a chair essentially exists." It is wrong to accept one or the other, or both, or neither. Buddhist philosophy opposes nihilism because it sees nihilism as utterly incorrect, so incorrect, in fact, that the very paradigm of correctness upon which one might test nihilism (whether or not a thing exists) is rejected and refuted as being a false dualistic binary. In terms of philosophical nihlism, Buddhism essentially rejects concepts of things being meaningful or non-meaningful for the same reason. A thing cannot intrinsically possess meaning, because a thing being meaningful requires at least two things: a meaningful thing, and an observer to find it meaningful. Because at least two things are required, no one thing can be said to be possessive of meaningfulness. If no one thing possesses it, it is wrong to call a thing meaningful, but equally wrong to say it is without meaning. To one person, a painting might just be colors. To another it might be a deep expression of cosmic truth. Both of them are absolutely correct. The painting is simultaneously with and without meaning. Everything is just like that. It's not nihilistic because it accepts existence of both meaning and material objects. It's not essentialist because it rejects existence of meaning intrinsically, as well as existence of material objects intrinsically. It's not really nihilism. It's realism.
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Sep 15, 2013 21:46
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You guys are really great with these answers. I've spent enough time on cross-tradition Dhamma forums to know this kind of discourse is rare and special. Also, a path that places emphasis on loving kindness and compassion is antithetical to nihilism in my opinion. The Buddha argued against nihilism in a few suttas, specifically. I'm on my phone so I can't look them up specifically but they are on access to insight.
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Sep 15, 2013 22:43
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Paramemetic posted:The core difference between Buddhism and nihilism is that Buddhism explicitly rejects nihilistic thinking as dualistic delusion at best, and critically harmful misunderstanding at worst. Buddhist thought bridges the Middle Way not just in behavior, practical ethics, and so on, but in terms of worldview. Buddhism bridges a gap between both metaphysical nihilism and essentialism, and existential nihilism and essentialism. It rejects metaphysical nihilism and metaphysical essentialism on the grounds that everything that exists relatively really exists, but not in any sort of tangible, permanent way, that it can be said to be possessive of existence in a meaningful way. Epistemological nihilism, on the other hand, isn't so much a statement that can be tested as it is a statement on testability - it's fundamentally sceptical and denies that there's a way to be certain whether or not something exists or doesn't exist. It's not so much about whether things actually exist as it's about the idea that you can't have definite knowledge on the truth of the matter, either because the truth is unknowable or just fundamentally impossible to express in human terms, which is a lot like how I understand the Buddhist concept of "illusion" to work. There's a chair, but there's no inherent ontological chair-ness to it. The way you describe the Buddhist view doesn't really sound all that qualitatively different to me, just dressed up more mystically as resolving a paradox, rather than acknowledging ignorance. I guess it solves the problem by making that knowledge accessible through enlightenment? I'm still not really sure about how that works. Prickly Pete posted:Also, a path that places emphasis on loving kindness and compassion is antithetical to nihilism in my opinion. The Buddha argued against nihilism in a few suttas, specifically. I'm on my phone so I can't look them up specifically but they are on access to insight.
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Sep 15, 2013 23:27
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There are sutras where the Buddha debates with the views of the annihilationists. If that differs from what you are referring to as nihilism that is my mistake. I'll try and find the specific suttas later tonight.
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Sep 15, 2013 23:44
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I have a weird question, when I was very young my father was a buhhdist he has since abandoned it, but I was raised with certain beliefs. One of them was rather unusual was that Buhdist can under certain circumstances eat meat, even if their vegetarian if it's being thrown away? Or that you did not prepared and was offered to you freely. Is this true.
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Sep 16, 2013 00:09
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Hollis posted:I have a weird question, when I was very young my father was a buhhdist he has since abandoned it, but I was raised with certain beliefs. One of them was rather unusual was that Buhdist can under certain circumstances eat meat, even if their vegetarian if it's being thrown away? Or that you did not prepared and was offered to you freely. Is this true. Monastics can eat meat that is being offered to them if they know that the animal was not killed specifically for them, yes. It's about not offending the generosity of one's benefactors, and also very much a "beggars can't be choosers" sort of thing. But again, the animal cannot have been killed for the monk, because then one would take on the negative karma of the killing. So like if you were a monk and you came to visit and I had made beef stew or hamburgers or something, and I gave you one, you could eat that (you don't have to, but it's not forbidden) whereas if you came over and I was like "sup bro I murdered this chicken for you let's eat it!" that would not be okay. I eat meat, but do not eat meat that was killed specifically for me (like lobster, crab, etc. where I know the animal was alive until I was gonna eat it). Eating meat that is going to be thrown away is probably also something that is okay, but I have not heard that one.
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Sep 16, 2013 00:14
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quote:Stuff on Nihilism. It's been a while, but in the last lecture I saw on Neitzsche, the professor had said that most people get his idea of nihilism wrong. Neitzsche claimed that it was Christianity and Marxism that were nihilistic because they denied reality in favour of a promise for future paradise; Heaven for Christians and Communism for Marxists. I'd say that Buddhism inherently rejects this kind of nihilism, because to be mindful is to be engaged with reality, as illustrated by this story from D. T. Suzuki's Zen Buddhism: quote:Bokuju, who lived in the latter half of he ninth century, was once asked, "We have to dress and eat every day, and how can we escape from all that?" The master replied, "We dress, we eat." "I do not understand you," said the questioner. "If you don't understand put your dress on and eat your food." But I'm just getting started with my studies, so who knows? 
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Sep 16, 2013 01:04
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D. T. Suzuki: Noted defender of how killing people is not killing people. Take him with a big grain of salt. Take all Buddhists with a grain of salt, but him particularly.
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Sep 16, 2013 02:03
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FouRPlaY posted:It's been a while, but in the last lecture I saw on Neitzsche, the professor had said that most people get his idea of nihilism wrong. Neitzsche claimed that it was Christianity and Marxism that were nihilistic because they denied reality in favour of a promise for future paradise; Heaven for Christians and Communism for Marxists. Nietzsche had a very unique and specific idea of what nihilism means, though, which are at this point at least a century out of date. I suppose if you look at it under that definition it's exactly what Buddhism doesn't, but I'm talking more about the modern conception that's the basis for existentialism, postmodernism, constructivism, those things.I love those little vignettes, by the way. Buddhist monks seem to spend so much time being smartasses at people, you just can't not like them. Is there a collection somewhere?
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Sep 16, 2013 10:04
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The-Mole posted:D. T. Suzuki: Noted defender of how killing people is not killing people. He was a bigtime Japanese nationalist for a long time, but he 'looks' like a holy zen guy.
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Sep 16, 2013 12:01
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Cardiovorax posted:Or maybe I'm getting nihilism wrong, I'm hardly an expert. Shut up about western materialist philosophy, why don't you? If you like vignettes and more, pick up a copy of the Blue Cliff Record, which has lots of Chinese buddhism stories and gong-ans. It even has the gooniest one to warm your goony heart featuring farts and the Universal Wind.
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Sep 16, 2013 12:08
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Mr. Mambold posted:Shut up about western materialist philosophy, why don't you? If you like vignettes and more, pick up a copy of the Blue Cliff Record, which has lots of Chinese buddhism stories and gong-ans. It even has the gooniest one to warm your goony heart featuring farts and the Universal Wind.
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Sep 16, 2013 12:28
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Cardiovorax posted:Or maybe I'm getting nihilism wrong, I'm hardly an expert. Part of it is also that the general Buddhist disavowal of nihilism predates modern nihilism and I may have been stretching its application too far. Generally Buddhism is a refutation of nihilism and essentialism as claims that things either don't exist or that they do exist. I personally find a lot of parallels between Buddhist thinking and existentialism, but because of the significant differences in Eastern thought from Western, and the big load of baggage that comes with a comparison to a hashed out modern philosophy, I think it's best to avoid such comparisons. In terms of vignettes, I can't help you quickly with that, but some koans are in the form of vignettes. Here is an online copy of The Gateless Gate, a compilation of koans: http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/cgi-bin/koan-index.pl
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Sep 16, 2013 12:51
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Cardiovorax posted:That sounds kind of like the exact opposite of realism, though. Realism is all about the statement that things are, in fact, independently real in a tangible and permanent fashion, whatever the observer thinks about them or whether an observer is even there. Existential nihilism on the other hand basically holds the same opinion on meaning, stating that "meaning" is something that exists only in the way humans relate to things or ideas, not that it doesn't or can't exist at all. The nihilistic approach to meaning is basically like talking about heat and cold where heat doesn't exist - cold, or meaninglessness, only makes sense in a context where meaning is a tangible thing that you can lack. I wasn't able to find the specific sutta I was looking for. The Ananda Sutta has an account of the Buddha talking with Vacchagotta, who I think is referred to as an annihilationist in the commentaries somewhere. He usually serves as a figure who tries to pin the Buddha down on his stance toward what are referred to as "speculative views". Anyway, I was originally equating the view of annihilationism with nihilism, and they seem to apply to different things entirely. So this may not be relevant at all, but the Buddha's discourses with Vacchagotta make for some interesting reading, especially this one. The Buddha is confronted with a variety of views that he waves aside as speculative or unimportant to the path, or simply not applicable to one who has been freed from clinging. quote:"Does Master Gotama have any position at all?" The translation is a little clunky, in my opinion, but the point is there. Bhikkhu Bodhi's is probably an easier read but it isn't online as far as I know.
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Sep 16, 2013 13:14
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