#1
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gVvmT9SKgrQ#t=66s

#2
Nippon
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NounsareVerbs posted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gVvmT9SKgrQ#t=66s



the_human_race.flv

#3
tardy on these heaters
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steve jobs is an excellent case study in "Buddhism"
#4
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From my interactions with the Chinese (China-born) people, there is a distinct difference in the way they think and act. They're like living organisms on auto-pilot, only concerned with self-interest and lacking any discernible emotions.. except for greed, hate and contempt.
#5
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interesting. tell us more about your interactions with the chinese, hanglyman.
#6
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aerdil posted:
interesting. tell us more about your interactions with the chinese, hanglyman.


that was a youtube comment and i'm not hanglyman

i spent three weeks in china once and traveled with some excellent chinese people, it was a good and memorable time.

that video is fucked up, tho

#7
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thirdplace posted:
They're like living organisms on auto-pilot, only concerned with self-interest and lacking any discernible emotions



That sense of culture shock is very common. The Chinese in the video are actually much kinder towards the child than official American forces are with the world's children. But that would never happen here!

#8
[account deactivated]
#9
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In Buddhism - not unlike in Zizek's talks on morality - you can't truthfully develop a sense of compassion until you've become enlightened - and can anyone guess how many people reach that point?
#10
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NounsareVerbs posted:
The Chinese in the video are actually much kinder towards the child than official American forces are with the world's children. But that would never happen here!

the question is, what is worse: setting up monstrous institutions that facilitate an end run around human decency, or being sufficiently accustomed to violence to not require such an institution in the first place?

depends on how much value you give to honesty, I guess

NounsareVerbs posted:
In Buddhism - not unlike in Zizek's talks on morality - you can't truthfully develop a sense of compassion until you've become enlightened - and can anyone guess how many people reach that point?


this isn't true at all though dude

#11
tardy on these heaters
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stop talking bullshit about an enormous and varied subject which you obviously know nothing about

you too Zizek
#12
Nippon
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converting 2 bhuddism is like converting to islam minus the insanity
#13
Unapologetic Opponent of Rape
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The best religion to convert to is Shinto, since it Actually True.
#14
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Goethestein posted:
converting 2 bhuddism is like converting to islam minus the insanity


i actually think you couldn't find two religions more different... islam is prolly the most life-affirming of the major religions, at least on a philosophical level, while buddhism is easily the least. vice-versa w/r/t rationalism-- the only leap of faith buddhism really requires is reincarnation, once you grant that everything else follows rationally, while islam has an even more complex and arbitrary cosmology than christianity (jinn, the kaaba, etc)

at least that's how my ignorant atheist ass has always seen them

#15
tardy on these heaters
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islam and buddhism are quite similar in a lot of ways actually
#16
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babyfinland posted:
islam and buddhism are quite similar in a lot of ways actually

unironically

#17
tardy on these heaters
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http://www.amazon.com/Common-Ground-Between-Islam-Buddhism/dp/1891785621

buddhism and islam both focus on moderation and virtuous living, and detachment from the world. both have a cosmological framework that is very simple and coherent in a broad sense that welcomes culturally-specific infusion from whatever society happens to adopt it as a religion. both religions engender the contemplative and intellectual life in a person, and both pursue inner peace and acceptance of the absolute toward that end.

your comments about islam being "life-affirming" and also the comments on the cosmologies of the two religions dont ring true for me at all. to speak of a given cosmology as "arbitrary" belies ignorance or misunderstanding of the framework tbh
#18
San Francisco
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Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I believe that by enforcing Western cultural norms, we can still civilize the Chinaman.
#19
tardy on these heaters
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also the "leap of faith" in islam (which is hardly anything of the sort, its simple recognition and acknowledgement of an obvious truth) is the unity and oneness of God, and from there the line of prophets and revelations follows. theres nothing "arbitrary" about jinn or the kaaba if you remove yourself from a narrow sophist mindset and permit a more historical sensibility into your consideration
#20
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babyfinland posted:
steve jobs is an excellent case study in "Buddhism"

#21
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reincarnation in the sense derived from Hinduism isn't even required, the foundational truths are simply

- All compounded or fabricated things are impermanent
- All emotions are pain born from clinging to the self (no emotion exists that is purely pleasurable)
- All phenomena are inherently empty (our experience of the world is always mediated)
- Nirvana is beyond human conceptualisation
#22
San Francisco
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Buddhism is the most directly depressing and suicidal religion. Its core tenet is that life is suffering; the logical conclusion from this is unmistakable. Reincarnation is not seen as a blessing to avoid death and experience a variety of lives, but is rather spun as a horrible curse, in which you must continue the agony of living over and over. The only way to break the cycle is to completely eradicate everything that is important to you from your heart, and finally achieve (after death) a state called Nirvana which is Sanskrit for "snuffing out". This is when your soul has been effectively eliminated from existence and so it is no longer reincarnated.
#23
Nippon
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lungfish posted:
Buddhism is the most directly depressing and suicidal religion. Its core tenet is that life is suffering; the logical conclusion from this is unmistakable. Reincarnation is not seen as a blessing to avoid death and experience a variety of lives, but is rather spun as a horrible curse, in which you must continue the agony of living over and over. The only way to break the cycle is to completely eradicate everything that is important to you from your heart, and finally achieve (after death) a state called Nirvana which is Sanskrit for "snuffing out". This is when your soul has been effectively eliminated from existence and so it is no longer reincarnated.



thats true imo

#24
Nippon
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Cycloneboy posted:
The best religion to convert to is Shinto, since it Actually True.



spirits and gods arent real

#25
tardy on these heaters
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lungfish posted:
Buddhism is the most directly depressing and suicidal religion. Its core tenet is that life is suffering; the logical conclusion from this is unmistakable. Reincarnation is not seen as a blessing to avoid death and experience a variety of lives, but is rather spun as a horrible curse, in which you must continue the agony of living over and over. The only way to break the cycle is to completely eradicate everything that is important to you from your heart, and finally achieve (after death) a state called Nirvana which is Sanskrit for "snuffing out". This is when your soul has been effectively eliminated from existence and so it is no longer reincarnated.



Perfect example of a Westerner projecting Christianity onto Buddhism

#26
Nippon
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thirdplace posted:

Goethestein posted:
converting 2 bhuddism is like converting to islam minus the insanity

i actually think you couldn't find two religions more different... islam is prolly the most life-affirming of the major religions, at least on a philosophical level, while buddhism is easily the least. vice-versa w/r/t rationalism-- the only leap of faith buddhism really requires is reincarnation, once you grant that everything else follows rationally, while islam has an even more complex and arbitrary cosmology than christianity (jinn, the kaaba, etc)

at least that's how my ignorant atheist ass has always seen them



personally i see a system of belief centered around unquestioning submission to an incompetent tyrant to be not at all "life affirming"

#27
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babyfinland posted:
your comments about islam being "life-affirming" and also the comments on the cosmologies of the two religions dont ring true for me at all. to speak of a given cosmology as "arbitrary" belies ignorance or misunderstanding of the framework tbh

i'll readily grant ignorance w/r/t islamic cosmology, other than to say that from an outsider viewpoint there seem to be a lot of syncretic elements that, while I'm sure are well-justified in the various literature, do not seem to me to be necessary conclusions from the central premises--that is, it is easy to imagine a monotheistic religion that preaches absolute submission to God that doesn't include those elements (sure, you can just say "god says to do the hajj" and under the principle of submission it follows logically that you do it but then you have to ask "why" and especially "why mecca?").

maybe that is what you mean by referring to history rather than sophism? that is fair if the point is "islam is believable/good" but the point I was clumsily trying to make was more that buddhism is more axiomatic, more a priori--e.g., the sort of thing a dude could derive by sitting under a tree and thinking. i don't really think there's anything wrong with basing stuff on historical facts, but there is a certain elegance that comes from not really needing to that appeals to atheist nerds like myself

the life affirming thing is more based on a comparison to christianity. christianity teaches that humans are inherently and inevitably flawed, bad, and evil. even the best christian is able to achieve salvation exclusively through divine forgiveness. islam, by contrast, strikes me as teaching that while humans are always unimaginably inferior to god, a person who follows a certain well-defined path is not bad, not evil, and that no active divine intervention is required for their salvation--it just kind of works out the way it was supposed to from the start. my knowledge of islam is on roughly wikipedia-level, though

#28
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lungfish posted:
Buddhism is the most directly depressing and suicidal religion. Its core tenet is that life is suffering; the logical conclusion from this is unmistakable. Reincarnation is not seen as a blessing to avoid death and experience a variety of lives, but is rather spun as a horrible curse, in which you must continue the agony of living over and over. The only way to break the cycle is to completely eradicate everything that is important to you from your heart, and finally achieve (after death) a state called Nirvana which is Sanskrit for "snuffing out". This is when your soul has been effectively eliminated from existence and so it is no longer reincarnated.


i agree that buddhism is nihilistic and that practicing it in the absence of reincarnation would mostly be a waste of a life BUT if reincarnation were real and existence was eternal i think buddhism would be dead-on-correct about it's implications. reincarnation would be fun for the first hundred thousand years or so but that shit would get old eventually.

#29
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babyfinland posted:
Perfect example of a Westerner projecting Christianity onto Buddhism


Christianity declares kindness to be the utmost virtue, treats life as a wonderful gift from God, condemns evil, and promises an eternity of moral perfection and bliss after we die.

#30
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thirdplace posted:

babyfinland posted:
your comments about islam being "life-affirming" and also the comments on the cosmologies of the two religions dont ring true for me at all. to speak of a given cosmology as "arbitrary" belies ignorance or misunderstanding of the framework tbh

i'll readily grant ignorance w/r/t islamic cosmology, other than to say that from an outsider viewpoint there seem to be a lot of syncretic elements that, while I'm sure are well-justified in the various literature, do not seem to me to be necessary conclusions from the central premises--that is, it is easy to imagine a monotheistic religion that preaches absolute submission to God that doesn't include those elements (sure, you can just say "god says to do the hajj" and under the principle of submission it follows logically that you do it but then you have to ask "why" and especially "why mecca?").

maybe that is what you mean by referring to history rather than sophism? that is fair if the point is "islam is believable/good" but the point I was clumsily trying to make was more that buddhism is more axiomatic, more a priori--e.g., the sort of thing a dude could derive by sitting under a tree and thinking. i don't really think there's anything wrong with basing stuff on historical facts, but there is a certain elegance that comes from not really needing to that appeals to atheist nerds like myself



the axiom is the oneness and absolute transcendence of god. the specificity of such things as the prophets are true because they are true, historically. they do not follow from the premise detached from the reality of things because their nature is of the created world, and therefore would have no significance if there was no actual created and particular universe. in any case, to consider cosmology in a way that removes the universe from it is such an enormous error that it makes any commentary from that staging point worthless. to say that a cosmology that address the real world is arbitrary is to say that the real world is arbitrary, which interrupts your comprehension of the very cosmology you are trying to negotiate. it invites the intrusion of a lot of unjustified assumptions, in this case the most obvious one being a prejudice concerning the significance and cosmological status of creation.

thirdplace posted:
the life affirming thing is more based on a comparison to christianity. christianity teaches that humans are inherently and inevitably flawed, bad, and evil. even the best christian is able to achieve salvation exclusively through divine forgiveness. islam, by contrast, strikes me as teaching that while humans are always unimaginably inferior to god, a person who follows a certain well-defined path is not bad, not evil, and that no active divine intervention is required for their salvation--it just kind of works out the way it was supposed to from the start. my knowledge of islam is on roughly wikipedia-level, though



thats fair enough in a comparative sense but we shouldnt use christianity as a baseline.

#31
tardy on these heaters
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lungfish posted:

babyfinland posted:
Perfect example of a Westerner projecting Christianity onto Buddhism

Christianity declares kindness to be the utmost virtue, treats life as a wonderful gift from God, condemns evil, and promises an eternity of moral perfection and bliss after we die.

So true.

#32
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lungfish posted:
treats life as a wonderful gift from God


Luke 14:26

#33
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thirdplace posted:
i agree that buddhism is nihilistic and that practicing it in the absence of reincarnation would mostly be a waste of a life BUT if reincarnation were real and existence was eternal i think buddhism would be dead-on-correct about it's implications. reincarnation would be fun for the first hundred thousand years or so but that shit would get old eventually.



it's not nihilistic in the sense of 'there is no soul', instead it questions the existence of a continuous Self in the Cartesian sense.

#34
San Francisco
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thirdplace posted:
i agree that buddhism is nihilistic and that practicing it in the absence of reincarnation would mostly be a waste of a life BUT if reincarnation were real and existence was eternal i think buddhism would be dead-on-correct about it's implications. reincarnation would be fun for the first hundred thousand years or so but that shit would get old eventually.


Then you must feel sorry for God, who is doomed to live forever.

I'm reminded again of the Alan Watts cosmology, in which all living things, including you and I, are actually God Himself effectively playing a game to amuse Himself. He may have supreme powers, but it's dreadfully boring being alone for eternity, so He created us as puppets. But we are actually Him; everything that is experienced by us is experienced by Him. Our self is an illusion created by God (which is actually who we are) for entertainment purposes. After death, we simply remain being God, and continue the theatrics with other living things for as long as we please.

The existential task of God is rejecting the temptation to self-terminate as a result of boredom.

#35
tardy on these heaters
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lungfish posted:

thirdplace posted:
i agree that buddhism is nihilistic and that practicing it in the absence of reincarnation would mostly be a waste of a life BUT if reincarnation were real and existence was eternal i think buddhism would be dead-on-correct about it's implications. reincarnation would be fun for the first hundred thousand years or so but that shit would get old eventually.

Then you must feel sorry for God, who is doomed to live forever.

I'm reminded again of the Alan Watts cosmology, in which all living things, including you and I, are actually God Himself effectively playing a game to amuse Himself. He may have supreme powers, but it's dreadfully boring being alone for eternity, so He created us as puppets. But we are actually Him; everything that is experienced by us is experienced by Him. Our self is an illusion created by God (which is actually who we are) for entertainment purposes. After death, we simply remain being God, and continue the theatrics with other living things for as long as we please.

The existential task of God is rejecting the temptation to self-terminate as a result of boredom.



ya things that the greatest minds humanity has produced have been pondering and debating since the dawn of history are resolvable with such insipid answers as that.

#36
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babyfinland posted:
the axiom is the oneness and absolute transcendence of god. the specificity of such things as the prophets are true because they are true, historically. they do not follow from the premise detached from the reality of things because their nature is of the created world, and therefore would have no significance if there was no actual created and particular universe. in any case, to consider cosmology in a way that removes the universe from it is such an enormous error that it makes any commentary from that staging point worthless. to say that a cosmology that address the real world is arbitrary is to say that the real world is arbitrary, which interrupts your comprehension of the very cosmology you are trying to negotiate. it invites the intrusion of a lot of unjustified assumptions, in this case the most obvious one being a prejudice concerning the significance and cosmological status of creation.

the problem with this is that we can never know whether or not historical facts are true, something islam certainly acknowledges insofar as it considers christianity/judism to be corrupted versions of the true faith. the less you lean on history, the less risk you face of falling to such corruption. you can certainly assert that islamic facts are not corrupted facts, and as far as i know that may be true, but those assertions look like more axioms

#37
tardy on these heaters
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thirdplace posted:

babyfinland posted:
the axiom is the oneness and absolute transcendence of god. the specificity of such things as the prophets are true because they are true, historically. they do not follow from the premise detached from the reality of things because their nature is of the created world, and therefore would have no significance if there was no actual created and particular universe. in any case, to consider cosmology in a way that removes the universe from it is such an enormous error that it makes any commentary from that staging point worthless. to say that a cosmology that address the real world is arbitrary is to say that the real world is arbitrary, which interrupts your comprehension of the very cosmology you are trying to negotiate. it invites the intrusion of a lot of unjustified assumptions, in this case the most obvious one being a prejudice concerning the significance and cosmological status of creation.

the problem with this is that we can never know whether or not historical facts are true, something islam certainly acknowledges insofar as it considers christianity/judism to be corrupted versions of the true faith. the less you lean on history, the less risk you face of falling to such corruption. you can certainly assert that islamic facts are not corrupted facts, and as far as i know that may be true, but those assertions look like more axioms



I guess that could be considered a leap of faith, but in my view one should (and naturally is, nowithstanding the deviation of satan and ego) be morally concerned enough not to allow silly and frankly irrational conceits as that to corrupt one's commitment to truth and the absolute. no one (excepting maybe like diogenes) has ever lived in fidelity to this idea so i don't see why I should take it seriously that anyone actually believes it (except to cater to sophitry).

also just fyi Islam considers all other religions (and ways of life) to be corrupted from the truth faith of submission to the One, which is inherently perfect and immutable. this isnt as xenophobic as it sounds to Western ears; it's simply the assertion that there is a correct way of life for humans, a place for us in creation and eternity, and that our problems and suffering are a result of deviation from this path. we all inevitably return to the One, and so for our own sake we should align our will with His will for us, which is that return

Edited by babyfinland ()

#38
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Casaubon posted:
it's not nihilistic in the sense of 'there is no soul', instead it questions the existence of a continuous Self in the Cartesian sense.

i will certainly agree that buddhism's analysis and critiques of the self are jaw-droppingly sophisticated. it's just nihilistic in the (nietzschean) sense that it holds "being alive is bad and it would be better to not exist"

and for what it's worth if there's a eternal system of reincarnation I agree. but if there's only one life, and i've never seen a good reason to think there isn't, then you can cheat the system--it's like how you can walk into a casino for a few hours and maybe come out a winner, but if you stay there for a year you're pr. much certain to lose.

#39
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babyfinland posted:
ya things that the greatest minds humanity has produced have been pondering and debating since the dawn of history are resolvable with such insipid answers as that.



stop talking bullshit about a simple subject which you obviously know nothing about

also lungfish is the least zen person i've ever read in my life and the fact that he namedrops Watts is hilarious

#40
tardy on these heaters
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NounsareVerbs posted:

babyfinland posted:
ya things that the greatest minds humanity has produced have been pondering and debating since the dawn of history are resolvable with such insipid answers as that.

stop talking bullshit about a simple subject which you obviously know nothing about

also lungfish is the least zen person i've ever read in my life and the fact that he namedrops Watts is hilarious



Watts is a mental midget and a clown whose calling is entertaining children