Buddhist Philosophy Puns

I was born in a Hindu family in India. I came across Buddha and his principles while studying Indian history. I had to briefly read up about Buddha's life, the four noble truths, eightfold path etc., for my exam. From there I got interested in Buddhist philosophy. I started watching videos, reading articles and "The Heart of Buddha" by Thich Nhat Hanh. I have been doing all this from a secular and rational perspective. It was definitely helping me grow as a person and live my life better.

Though I knew about Dalai Lama since my childhood, I had never really followed him closely. Now, after broadly knowing about Buddhism and Siddhartha Gautama, I started watching Dalai Lama's speeches, interviews and discussions. I feel he is the closest person to The Buddha that I've ever come across. He has so much knowledge about the world affairs. He never emphasizes upon religious rituals or scriptures. He seems to be completely honest, logical and aware of practicality in this world. His words always promote compassion towards people, environment etc. He fits into my idea of Buddha that I developed in my brief study. Forgive me if I'm hurting any of your religious beliefs with this post but this is a honest opinion. I wanted to share it somewhere. Please feel free to add to it or oppose it.

Hi guys,

I am a practitioner of Hindu tantra, have only read about Buddhist ideas for about ten years and do not know very much of Vajrayana, but I have some questions:

• In deity yoga, one imagines oneself as a buddha/deity. Does this not strengthen belief in a separate self? It seems to me it would strengthen the idea of a "me" as the one imagining and also the idea of "me" as the deity/buddha, when by direct perception already all phenomena are empty of self/a core/are anatman.
• Also, visualizing a deity/buddha with certain attributes - there is no unchanging "core" or "self" with certain attributes, so why imagine there to be beings with these unchanging qualities, even if they are positive/buddhas? There are no beings at all, just the empty basis manifesting experience, no?
• Tantrism implies the transgression of boundaries. The imposition of vows, which, when broken, result in one going to vajra hell, seem to be completely against the realization of the emptiness of mind-made phenomena. Buddhism and Tantrism is about absolute radical freedom; prescribed rules are very far from the radical freedom of perfect realization.

I mean no harm, I am very interested in tantric Buddhism - it just seems to me that many of its parts are actually opposed to the core realizations that Buddhist thought is supposed to generate: the empty nature of all phenomena.

Can you help me understand these? Are these supposed to be preparatory practices? If yes, then I do not understand why these are called advanced, as they do not deal with direct perception of emptiness but only with indirect symbols. Why do that when emptiness can be pointed out directly?

Thank you

Probably lol

Here's my understanding of things:

The doctrine of anatman says that we shouldn't think of the person as having any kind of particular and persistent constituent that makes them what they are. What we understand to be a person is as an aggregate of many physical and mental attributes that have continuity but not permanence. It is this continuity that allows us to adopt conventional attitudes towards persons moment-to-moment (even if these break down on the scale of years or decades).

The doctrine of rebirth has it that people are trapped in a cycle of birth and death whereby that very person becomes someone else upon being reborn.

I have looked around online for answers to how these two doctrines are reconciled. I saw one person claim that the continuity between persons in one moment and the next which grounds their conventional personhood is the same as the continuity that exists between a person in one life and the next.

However, I've always interpreted the continuity as having to do with a causal relationship between past and future physical/psychological states of a person (that's how I've viewed things having read about dependent arising although my understanding of that idea is far from complete). If this is the case, in what sense can you pin point a particular future being as a continuation of you, since a person has causal influence on many beings throughout their lifetime, including beings that they coexist with and beings that only come into existence long after the 'original' one dies.

What are the most famous/popular answers to this question from Buddhist philosophers?

Thanks for any help.

There is no shortage of ideas and beliefs from Asian culture that can be found throughout Will Wight’s Cradle series. I’m currently in an Asian Philosophy class and wanted to talk about one parallel I’ve noticed.

In traditional Buddhist belief, there is a concept known as the “Noble Eightfold Path.” Sound familiar? Essentially, the Noble Eightfold Path is a collection of practices that are designed to mutually support one another. As a whole, practicing them together is thought to lead to the most optimal effect of developing true understanding of reality (i.e. enlightenment). I won’t get into what each of the eight practices are (look them up if you’re interested), but I think the similarities between this and the Path of the Eightfold Spear from the Eight Man Empire are clear. You can even apply understanding the nature of reality to developing Icons, which are concepts of reality sacred artists can have authority over.

Anyway just wanted to share something I found very cool. We all know that Cradle is steeped in Asian beliefs (there are some themes from Daoism I could mention: Dao literally means “The Way”) but I love how Will can change things in a way that fits the world organically while also paying homage to source material.

I came across this video of excerpts from a conversation Sam had in his podcast with David Pizarro and Tamler Sommers (hosts of the Very Bad Wizards podcast) and really enjoyed it. I think it is as good as some tracks in the app and have found it really interesting. For those who haven't listened to it I would recommend it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUqweDzPYY4&t=14s&ab_channel=AbirTarafdar

I think that edited track with just Sam's voice works really well and it's informative. If anyone is curious about the original conversation it's episode 92 of the Making Sense podcast, called The Limits of Persuasion. Here it is on youtube, the segment where they discuss meditation starts at 1:38:19

https://youtu.be/VPVyoR_KtEY?t=5899

I think others here would enjoy it.

Happy New Year to everyone in this community.

Is anyone taking this class with Professor Tao Jiang this winter? Please pm me.

Also, if anyone has taken this class before and has links to quizlets or anything please please let me know.

Can anyone recommend great books to start studying about buddhist philosophy?

Has anyone taken Buddhist Philosophy with Bertnson? I'm considering taking it next semester and I wanna know if its easy or has a heavy workload

Sort of akin to saying if green tea is zen, Taoism is the water.

I am trying to root this thought to its origin so that I can perhaps find source material, books, or talks about this. Is this a Buddhist concept, or is it more a Taoist view on inner peace? I heard it in a talk from a Shaolin monk, who (from what I understand) is a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism. So I am not sure where this view originates from.

Any help is welcome.

Thanks!

Hey! I just watched a video about the forbidden tree of knowledge with buddhist perspective and I found it really interesting, I was thinking of keep watching that channel to inform myself more but it would be nice to have different sources, I would love recommendations of where or what to search! :)

ps: sorry for bad english

Before I became interested in Buddhism I briefly studied philosophy. A lot of it struck me as tedious categorization and logic chopping between different ethical schools (utilitarianism, consequentialism, etc.) that only represented (in my opinion) partial truths or views.

Western ethics is also very much founded in the Classical idea that moral virtue derived from man’s reason and intellect. There's little talk about compassion and love, it’s mostly rationalizations of sufferance avoidance and talk of abstract virtues and principles. This strikes me as a cold, incomplete view but maybe I’m over generalizing.

I think pure reason can slip into instrumental rather than selfless action if it’s the foundation of your moral actions. Maybe in macro-scale cases where you need to allocate relief to displaced migrants or something reason and planning are useful but in daily life, that type of pervasive intellectualism seems to run counter to what I’ve reading in Buddhist texts.

I’m currently interested in Buddha, and his teachings/philosophy. Are there any good books that I should read to learn about the topic?

Edit: Thank you for the suggestions. :)

It seems to me like there may be some interesting parallels between certain developments in contemporary philosophy of mind/consciousness and buddhist philosophy. For example, the notion of the construction of the self is (as far as I understand, I am very much a layman in all eastern traditions of philosophy) a central idea in buddhism and also extensively discussed in work of e.g. Thomas Metzinger (and I am sure many other contemporary thinkers). Perhaps another example would be the dissolution of the object-subject distinction, non-dual thinking and the exploration of the human mind through introspection, which (again, as far as I understand) is central both in buddhist thought and phenomenological approaches, which in turn are influental in contemporary philosophy of consciousness and embodied cognition approaches.

Is anyone aware of any ressources on this topic or has any insights they would like to share, perhaps on other interesting similarities between buddhist and contemporary western philosophy of mind? Any answer is highly appreciated. Have a good day.

Antinatalism is an ethical view that assigns a negative value to birth, arguing that humans should abstain from procreation because it is morally wrong to subject a child to a life where suffering and death are guaranteed.

Is this philosophy futile in Buddhism since if you don't have children, those children/streams of consciousness will just be born elsewhere?

Any other resources like blogs, youtube channel would also be of great help.

A question from non-buddhist. I value spirituality but I do not identify myself as a member of any religion.

Nowadays society is obsessed with success, achievments, it supposedly glorifies "the journey, not the outcome" but those that didn't make it are sort off ruled out and judged for the outcomes.

Lastly I've been hearing lots of self-help guru's talking about how everyone should pick one goal, devote her/his time and energy, create a strategy and go for this vision. It doesn't have to be big, but useful to society in some way. They say it is the only way to find meaning and happiness in life. "You have to sacrifice yourself to realize your potential for the benefit of society and yourself" - that kind of thinking.

Now, there is some value in that, but I feel like this is extremely western efficiency-oriented mindset, decorated with spiritual words. It puts pressure to treat life like a game or battle where one has to use tactics and endurance to "realize" himself, but for the benefit of the community. But more and more people are tired of devoting themselves for goals in this competetive age, many people also are lost and confused with what they can and what they should.

I don't see myself as particullary useful to people. And frankly - I don't mind. I have a simple job, I like creative expression, gotten pretty good at some things but I never felt desire to "sell myself", to make money. I was always more of a drifter and explorer rather than doer or go getter. I want to write a book someday but not it's because I feel like it's my mission/goal or whatever. I just like books.

I wonder how Buddhism and eastern philosophy aproaches the western view on "goal" and "purpose" and how both differ. I have always admired hermits living in the wilderness and monks living simple lives away from civilization, but also normal people living simple lives, content with themselves, without any "finish line".

Would love to know your thoughts.

My understanding of Anattā is that it basically means there is no self and nothing survives death except the base consciousness that has no identity and feeds all of life like a river. In essence, the drop of water returns to the ocean and there is no memory of it having been the drop of water except as information somewhere in the ocean. This is in contrast to the Hindu concept of Ātman, which does imply there is life after death and that the identity or soul does live on with memories of itself in some form.

My own inclination is toward Anattā, as it makes more logical sense to me with what I believe through science. However, I do not know how to reconcile Buddhism's teaching of Karma and Nirvana with Anattā. If nothing survives death, and if there is no identity that carries over from life to life, how can Karma exist, and who/what is being freed by Nirvana?

If Nirvana is the end of the cycle of Saṃsāra, but Buddhists do not believe in Ātman, then who or what is being reincarnated? If you say some variation of "Well it is the source of all consciousness that flows in and out of form" then this makes no sense when paired with Nirvana or Karma. If something like Brahman is being reincarnated, then it makes no sense that one individual life could be freed from Saṃsāra, so what is Nirvana? If you are saying that all of existence is being freed from Saṃsāra through my own achievement of Nirvana, then why weren't we all freed when Gautama Buddha achieved Nirvana? If we each have to achieve individual Nirvana to be freed from Saṃsāra, how does this not imply some form of identity surviving death and being reincarnated? The same essential question can be repeated for Karma, but I won't repeat it because it will be redundant.

Thank you for any insight you can provide, and for reading my question/post.

Where to start