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Tautologicus posted:"Then you're doing it wrong" is probably the most poisonous statement in all of spirituality. As an atheist I am kind of going to agree on that score. Its so often means "you aren't doing things my way". Also, how does this idea of Buddhism in this thread match up with a lot of the stuff that has occured historically within Buddhism in particular, things like the vast lands owned by monasteries and the charging of rents during the T'ang Dynasty, alongside various other dynastic issues. Surely the vast amounts owned and administrated by churches in the middle ages in Europe is at the very least similar if not exactly the same? The problem being that the more removed you were/holier you were the more people wanted to give you stuff in their wills to get into heaven/achieve a meritorious rebirth. And you can hardly turn down all the cash can you? So it ends up with people who have supposedly renounced everything having to act as land owners for areas larger than some potentates.
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Jul 22, 2015 15:55
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Rhymenoceros posted:It doesn't match up. Kind of like you have what Jesus actually said and taught, and a lot of other stuff. I am just wondering about the linkage up. I mean Buddhism has a more substantial (or at least longer term) monastic tradition than Christianity, was wondering if anything had been done to change this set up from within. Sort of like how we see the Franciscans and various other orders take over from some of the Benedictines (before they themselves are taken over by the Jesuits).
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Jul 22, 2015 17:08
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So there were no big changes? I mean, there obviously were I'm not a dingus, but there were no new sects entirely? See I studied a fair bit about the Christian Monastic traditions and always found it interesting how the cycle repeated with changes in it. Either becoming harder, softer or (in the case of the Jesuits) actively breaking apart most other ideas and just going "gently caress it, we have to be involved in the world so lets just go to town!" I mean I know there is a tradition for such things not to happen technically in the Buddhist faith, but I also wonder how the people justified the extra 600 tonne solid gold Buddha statue? I mean was there any answer inside of the Buddhist (or just the monastic) tradition that presupposed an answer to it when people said "you've had 15 different dancing girls brought into the abbots chamber in the past 2 months". I'd also like to see those arguments because as much as people probably don't want to get attached to things I bet the arguments were something to behold.
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Jul 22, 2015 17:42
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Rhymenoceros posted:I don't know enough to answer any of this :-) Sure thing mate! Was only wondering. Thanks for the responses anyway mate. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Jul 22, 2015 |
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Jul 22, 2015 18:09
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I read a (rather bad) translation of the Dao quite recently and I can't help but think that a lot of it is just a bit bad when it comes to running a nation. "Strengthen the backs and weaken the minds of the people" definitely looks like a later addition by someone who had much too much interest in Lord Shang.
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Jul 22, 2015 20:03
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Purple Prince posted:Read the Zhuangzi as well! It's much funnier and clearer in relation to Taoist metaphysics than the Daodejing, and while the earlier books are essentially restatements and elaborations on the Daodejing in prose form, the later books are also chronologically later and have some interesting developments on the earlier books' themes by later Daoist scholars of the Warring States period. I'll look into that, it sounds interesting. I've been doing a bit of reading based around a brief history of China going from the Qin to the Qing, but one thing I would like to ask about Taoism is how much the people who were constantly touting mercury to Emperors were actual Taoists? Mainly because they are always written about, in the admittedly Confucian tradition, as being hawkers and confidence tricksters.
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Jul 23, 2015 08:56
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Been doing some reading up in my book of Buddhist scripture. Its kind of fascinating how different it is to listen to practitioners of it now versus back then. Like the story where one monk clearly doesn't like another "dies" for 9 days is then tortured because he spoke out against him and then comes back to life. He's then told by the other monk (in one of the most self-righteous bits of translation I have seen) that he'll be reborn in a golden palace because of good merit. Practices of Buddhism in these days seems a lot more merciful and sane than it once was.
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Aug 2, 2015 23:50
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Just as a quick thing I remember reading that the Silk process did kill the worms. People just liked silk so much they continued using it.
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Dec 2, 2016 00:12
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Is annihilation of the self as big a thing in all buddhist traditions? Alongside that, why do Zen monks keep punching each other in the stories I read? Is it a sort of Diogenes esc attempt to make people think differently?
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Feb 12, 2020 00:45
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I tried looking for this and I apologise if this is a sore subject, but is there any overt anti-disability prejudice inside of Buddhism? Also, does the idea of reincarnation have to necessarily correspond with a kind of "just world" phenomenon.
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Feb 16, 2020 08:52
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Nessus posted:I'm guessing you mean in the sense of, if you're disabled you deserve it because of karma? I don't think that that concept has come up in any teachings, though I could see how it might emerge as the expression of poo poo-rear end bullying in a Buddhist culture. In the sense of, "disabilities would be a fruit of bad karma," that is I suppose believed, in the sense that all kinds of bad things are the fruit of bad karma. But that isn't the same as deserving them. It's more that someone at work said to a colleague whose son had just passed away that "He must have done something wrong in a past life" and, whilst the person in question is not a theologian by any stretch of the imagination, it did get me thinking. Nessus posted:As for a just world, I don't know quite what you mean. Buddhism has been used to buttress various institutions and political orders, but it's also protested them; within a period of fifty years, some Buddhists advocated for the Japanese imperial project and other Buddhists committed suicide to protest the south Vietnamese government. I don't think any part of Buddhism would say this is the best of all possible worlds! Or that our current order of society is somehow intrinsically good - though a Buddhist might hold other beliefs that would not be incompatible with Buddhist practice, that did make such claims. More like, due to the way karma works, you would be more likely to be nobility if you had paid attention in a previous existence. Is there a cross over between a belief in an "easier" material existence having some intersection with past actions?
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Feb 16, 2020 09:49
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