(&humanities)
How do I into secular Buddhism, Veeky Forums?
Feel like it's a philosophy I could really benefit from, but I simply can't bring myself to believe in anything spirtual.
It's not from being an edgy atheist, I truly want some kind of religion in my life. I feel it would give me stability. But I also know all natural phenomena can ultimately be explained by physics.
I just want a philosophy I can lean on
It's literal Idolatry and Nihilism.
You're better off being a fedora since atleast you'll provide some entertainment to non-fedoras.
Is it really just nihilism?
You are born, you live and then you die.
That's the Buddhist mindset/ideal.
Nothing matters, nothing has meaning... And in the end, they didn't come to these conclusions empirically or through any sort of philosophy or train of thought.
They want to believe that those things are true, so they are... True Nihilism to the core.
If you accept the primacy of the mental and the emptiness of 'self,' you might not worry about believing in anything spiritual.
Focus on developing compassion before you worry about believing in Avalokitesvara. Practice is more important in Buddhism than what you believe in.
Not really. Its a panteist conception of the been truly manifested only behing the perceptions. So the more you become less atracted to the phisical world and believing what your eyes say to you, the more you will escape that filter to find yourself embraced by the reality. The mind create the but the world is the mind. Nothing nihilistic. Its easy to just call everything "meaningless so nihilism" but is a cheap thought. They have valious and believes, things they care about. To scape the fake pain of the flesh. So try meditation and un a couple of weeks you will get that feeling.
>I truly want some kind of religion in my life.
Have some christianity, you nigger.
Secular Buddhism is like atheistic Catholicism.
Ultimately you're asking "why should I be good"? Philosophically: if you don't believe in spiritual "rewards" then there is only one answer:
You do good because you believe in it.
Read Siddhartha, if you like it enough read some actual texts.
"Nothing matters, nothing has meaning."
Become a stoic instead
>I simply can't bring myself to believe in anything spirtual
Then don't be religious, you retard. You don't need it, you just want a fancy way of being a special fucking snowflake.
>I just want a philosophy I can lean on
Then read philosophy, you dumbfuck. If you're too fucking stupid to come up with your own philosophy (and you probably are), at least you'll get an idea what people smarter than you think.
Also, read Creation by Gore Vidal.
Depends on what you mean by "secular" Buddhism.
Buddhist philosophy are all tied to few important key axioms.
If you accept such, then you will naturally feel inclined to believe in other parts that build on top.
>but isn't it Nihilism?
What is Nihilism? Belief that nothing matters, there are no meanings, nothing is knowable, etc
Buddhism talks about life improvements to which a person can find meaning in. The sole premise is suffering. How to cure suffering. If you do not believe in the suffering or its meaning or its implications.
There's a clear goal in Buddhism, a clear meaning, a clear guide on how to obtain such things. So I don't get why people are confusing it with Nihilism.
My personal opinion on this basic confusion probably stemming from the fact that people are retarded. "Oh buddhism talks about you have no soul, WOW what an edgy nihilist"
I think what you should ask here is Buddhism's role in history in those regions of the world
Before you finding its "philosophy" "useful"
PS. However studying those parts of work never makes me feel useful
Technically studying history and philosophy never makes a person feel useful unless they're getting paid to do that or can make money off of it.
>Is it really just nihilism?
It can be interpreted as nihilistic, because it views desire(Taṇhā) as the source of suffering(dukkha) in life.
Which is why they advocate a completely ascetic life, with focus on meditation.
The problem is that desiring and aspirations is what makes the world go around.
If everyone did like Buddhism demands we would be extinct in a very short period of time.(Which is conversely why Schopenhauer was an Anti-natalist, because he saw this as the only logical conclusion).
Nietzsche on the other hand didn't see suffering as intrinsically bad, and believed any morality that said it was intrinsically bad, was the morality of slaves and weak, life-denying people.
He advocated an aristocratic morality, based on exceptionalism and the Will to see your goals manifest in the world.
OP I'm sorry you've gotten such a shit bunch of responses so far. Please disregard all that trash, your initial intuitions are correct.
1. Look into mindfulness and mindfulness meditation. This is the single most beneficial thing you can get from a secular look at Buddhism imo. You can lean on it any time, any place. It is more a practice than a philosophy, although it has philosophy embedded in it. It doesn't need to be connected to Buddhism at all. It is backed up by all sorts of scientific research.
2. There's nothing spiritual about Buddhism. There's nothing in the dharma that conflicts with a scientific, marerialist understanding of the world. You don't have to have faith in anything to benefit from Buddhism. The point is to understand reality as it truly is.
3. Maybe read some books or listen to lectures by thich nhat hanh. I think he has a great teaching style and is very helpful in thinking about many things. Lion's Roar is a website/magazine that has a lot of good intro articles as well.
>because it views desire(Taṇhā) as the source of suffering(dukkha) in life.
Taṇhā =/= desire. it means thirst, craving, grasping, greed. the point is to get rid of these things, not desire itself (which is impossible).
>Which is why they advocate a completely ascetic life, with focus on meditation.
buddha explicitly rejected a completely ascetic life after trying it himself and realising it didn't acheive anything. same with a life of permanent meditation. the true way is the middle path between all extremes.
>buddha explicitly rejected a completely ascetic life after trying it himself and realising it didn't acheive anything. same with a life of permanent meditation.
So in other words, the whole religion is completely logically incoherent.
If desires cause suffering, and suffering needs to be avoided, what exactly is the answer here?
>desires cause suffering
they do not. trying to grasp onto them does.
>suffering needs to be avoided.
it does not. avoidance itself is the problem.
forget the word "desire". it gives the impression we have to become some sort of inhuman, life denying automatons to be happy.
it is perfectly logical and you can prove it yourself by just looking at your own experiences at any time.
Please explain how the dharma is compatible with materialism.
You're speaking in tongues dude.
Stop denying that there isn't a value structure here.
Are you saying Buddhists don't believe suffering is bad?
You're conflating your words when you're trying to argue semantics. If the issue is semantics, you need to be clear with your presentation.
Avoidance of suffering is not a Buddhist route.
So what is the goal of Buddhism if it doesn't have anything to do with stopping desire, or stopping suffering?
The Buddhist position is presented in the very basic premise in the four noble truths. The Eightfold path, the last of the fourth noble truth and its basically the answer to your question.
Its not avoidance, but rather understanding what suffering is, what causes suffering, what needs to be done to stop suffering, etc.
Also avoidance is not same as stopping. Your words are clearly loaded to give the impression of a life denying nihilist position when its not the case. Whether its intentional or unintentional bias, it clearly shows.
these are the two of the most important principles in buddhism i think:
en.wikipedia.org
they are a bit tricky to get your head around at first, but basically tldr; everything is connected, nothing exists by itself, things exist due to causual conditions and stop existing when those conditions change. these are the basic teachings of the buddha which underpin all the stuff about suffering. i study ecology myself and i see these connections all the time. from what little biology, geology, and chemistry i know it seems to be true too.
of course suffering is bad, there's no reason to suffer. anything suffering can motivate, compassion and understanding can motivate better.
it helps you overcome the delusions which cause attachment/aversion which lead to suffering.
>Your words are clearly loaded to give the impression of a life denying nihilist position when its not the case.
Yeah, but you don't seem to understand that from any Westerners perspective, any mode of being that does not have goals that can manifest in reality(e.g aspirations and desire to see his or her Will fulfilled), will be seen as nihilistic.
And you haven't really supplied an answer to that, other than shit like "lol moderation is key", or "hey, I wasn't talking about X, I was talking Y. Oh sorry I meant W, no wait, I meant Z"
>any mode of being that does not have goals that can manifest in reality(e.g aspirations and desire to see his or her Will fulfilled), will be seen as nihilistic.
it actually facilitates this goal better than every other "mode of being" because it starts from a correct appraisal of reality and allows for effective action based on this true understanding of the world as it is.
>I have don't an argument therefore "Westerners perspective" argument
lel, as a westerner, I'll call out your weasel wording, again.
>any mode of being that does not have goals that can manifest in reality
So we're going the route of denial of answers? Still I don't get why you're pursuing this route. Lack of actual argument or just braindead in reading comprehension or simply too blinded to see the answer presented multiple times throughout this thread
>rebirth, karma, samsara, dharma
>correct appraisal of reality
>rebirth
there is no reincarnation in buddhism, not even any birth or death. those who say there is do not understand the principles of impermanence and no-self properly. 'rebirth' can be used as a pedagogical tool to express this reality:
youtube.com
>karma
karma just means action. it is a correct understanding of how our actions have consequences, how seeds bare fruit.
>samsara
a metaphor for the mental world of suffering that is perpetuated by ignorance, attachement, and aversion. it is a mental state, not a really existing phsyical one. as such, it is an illusion. ultimately there is no distinction between samsara and nirvana, which is also a mental state.
Sounds like you've tempered your Buddhism in Western materialism there m8, because those things are certainly metaphysical in a majority Buddhist country.
these views come from the Pali Canon as well as the Prasangika subschool of Madhyamaka as taught by Nagarjuna, and to a lesser extent Soto Zen as taught by Dogen + whatever Thich Nhat Hanh is. they are as old as buddhism itself.
Reminder that the vipassana movement is perfect the secular buddhism for western people
I. Purification of Conduct (sila-visuddhi)
The Method of Insight in Brief
II. Purification of Mind (citta-visuddhi)
III. Purification of View (ditthi-visuddhi)
1. Analytical Knowledge of Body and Mind (nama-rupa-pariccheda-ñana)
IV. Purification by Overcoming Doubt (kankha-vitarana-visuddhi)
2. Knowledge by Discerning Conditionality (paccaya-pariggaha-ñana)
3. Knowledge by Comprehension (sammasana-ñana)
4. Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away (udayabbaya-ñana) in its weak stage, involving the Ten Corruptions of Insight
V. Purification by Knowledge and Vision of What Is Path and Not Path (maggamagga-ñanadassana-visuddhi)
VI. Purification by Knowledge and Vision of the Course of Practice (patipada-ñanadassana-visuddhi) (including mature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away)
5. Knowledge of Dissolution (bhanga-ñana)
6. Awareness of Fearfulness (bhayatupatthana-ñana)
7. Knowledge of Misery (adinava-ñana)
8. Knowledge of Disgust (nibbida-ñana)
9. Knowledge of Desire for Deliverance (muncitu-kamyata-ñana)
10. Knowledge of Re-observation (patisankhanupassana-ñana)
11. Knowledge of Equanimity about Formations (sankhar'upekkha-ñana)
12. Insight Leading to emergence (vutthanagamini-vipassana-ñana)
13. Knowledge of Adaptation (anuloma-ñana)
14. Maturity Knowledge (gotrabhu-ñana)
VII. Purification by Knowledge and Vision (ñanadassana-visuddhi)
15. Path Knowledge (magga-ñana)
16. Fruition Knowledge (phala-ñana)
17. Knowledge of Reviewing (paccavekkhana-ñana)
18. Attainment of Fruition (phalasamapatti)
19. The Higher Paths and Fruitions
It's an appeal to authority. Fake bullshit to fuck with you, like a physicist who claims a heat death will cause existence to become non-existent and people believe it, because holy fuck me a physicist said it.
I wouldn't listen to any of these fags. They're mostly atheists in an existential crisis from the cognitive dissonance of not believing their disbelief in belief is a belief, and non-existent existence ain't happenin' buddy.
Fuck these cunts. Post dank frogs.
>I wouldn't listen to any of these fags. They're mostly atheists in an existential crisis from the cognitive dissonance of not believing their disbelief in belief is a belief, and non-existent existence ain't happenin' buddy.
...
Ignore new age bullshit and anyone who encourages drug abuse. Focus on the noble eightfold path, practice mindfulness and meditation, read the sutras and contemplate them. Talk to other buddhists if possible. Practice is the most important thing, and you do not need to literally believe all metaphysics to benefit from dharma - many teachings are likened to a raft of arbitrary conceptions that may be discarded once the river of your hardships. Faith is not blind but cultivated by reason and experience. Even a single line of dharma can bring much contentment to yourself.
>Nihilistic
>You are born, you live and then you die.
That's the Buddhist mindset/ideal.
Samsara is a cycle of endless rebirth, with enlightenment as a universal goal that all beings will eventually reach, and a duty to embrace universal compassion. I don't know how you can contrive that as nihilistic. Dukkha means life is full of suffering, sure, but this is simple fact, and pessimism towards a current state does not imply that goals against it are meaningless. Quite the opposite.
Rebirth is not the same as reincarnation, it is a midpoint between reincarnation and annihilation. There is no soul in buddhism. You must really grasp anatta and anicca to understand it.
Emotive hostility to """western""" materialism is fruitless. It is better to simply cultivate an understanding of dependent origination and deconstruct how the "material" is defined in our perception.
>like a physicist who claims a heat death will cause existence to become non-existent and people believe it
when did this happen?
>secular Buddhism
"No."
en.wikipedia.org
^This guy knows what's up.
>You must really grasp anatta and anicca to understand it.
I feel like some notions of karma and aggregates are in order for these doctrines as well.
Various forms of heat death have been posited as a potential endpoint for the universe for a while. Give folks an inch and they take a mile; one researcher talks about it in terms of most probable potential outcome given our understandings and observations (which are subject to constant revision) and you get an article on a sci "journalism" site talking about EVIDENCE FOR THE BIG FREEZE.
not necessarily. you can practice Buddhism because you want to end suffering. even if it's just your own mental suffering. the faith required for that is pretty minimal senpai.
>because you want to end suffering
>discussions of faith
My main objection to "secular" form of Buddhism is that it treats Yoga and contemplation as a refuge from a hostile and absurd world rather than as a tool for cutting through.
This, of course, will vary from outfit to outfit, and from instructor to instructor.
Faith is not required here but if you're gonna work the contemplations or yoga just because it makes you feel good then you're really selling yourself short and not particularly cultivating outward compassion.
Then yoga becomes another thing to grasp and cling at rather than confronting your reality head-on.
Fedora buddhism kek
this.
just finished listening to Sam Harris's book that the anecdote of the dream about Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche came from. (You can listen to the book for free if you sign up for a free month trial of Audible, Amazon's audio book app.)
he recounted the dream to contrast with someone's NDE, which this person took as proof of heaven, etc. whereas, despite the apparent compelling evidence of his dream, he saw that it couldn't be taken as objective evidence of anything, which is fair enough.
The reason I chose to post was to point out that Sam Harris did receive the literal pointing out instruction in person from Tulku Urgyen, which he sees as the most valuable teaching he has ever received from anyone. I didn't know too much about Harris and was surprised by his accounts of his practice and experiences in the book. Briefly, he has been interested in meditation and spiritual experience since his youth. He studied vipassana in the Burmese tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw, doing a number of retreats, with a year or so in retreat in total. He then practiced in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Ramana Maharshi for a while before travelling to Kathmandu with his Advaita group and meeting Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.
He says of Tulku Urgyen, "he could point out the nature of mind with the precision and matter-of-factness of teaching a person how to thread a needle and could get an ordinary meditator like me to recognise that consciousness is intrinsically free of self. There might be some initial struggle and uncertainty, depending on the student, but once the truth of nonduality had been glimpsed, it became obvious that it was always available and there was never any doubt about how to see it again. I came to Tulku Urgyen yearning for the experience of self transcendence and in a few minutes he showed me that I had no self to transcend. [...] After a few minutes Tulku Urgyen simply handed me the ability to cut through the illusion of the self directly, even in ordinary states of consciousness. This instruction was, without question, the most important thing I have ever been explicitly taught by another human being."
I think this meeting with Tulku Urgyen (he also visited several times in the last five years Tulku Urgyen was alive) happened before the DKR dream, just to put it in a bit of context.
I would recommend the book in that he speaks quite clearly about Dzogchen and, given his past experience with the very gradual method of Vipassana and the very sudden method of Advaita Vedanta, addresses the kind of issues that come up here regularly. For example, he gives good reasons why approaching Dzogchen after years of other practice like shamata might be a good idea even if they are unnecessary and essentially point the student in the wrong direction.
What tweaks me about Sam Harris is his blind spots. For instance he insists that Buddhism is likely the only "spiritual" practice worth looking at, and that other iterations of the contemplative or attention focusing practices are shit.
Meanwhile, the same scientific sources cited by implicate other traditions, including Christian and Western Esoteric as providing the same benefits, the same activation of underused/stimulated brain loci, all of which require some degree of devotional expertise to unlock fullest benefit therefrom.
See:
>Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis I and II
>Neurotheology
>Shamanism: A Biopsychophysical paradigm
>The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience
>Neuroscience of Religious Experience
>etc.
It FEELS like Sam's lost much of his 'pointing out' under layers of media dickwaving, but who am I to indict the life of someone else's mind.
As Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche puts it, if you want to feel good and peaceful about life you should stop meditating and get a massage, because the dharma is intended to make you feel terrible.
I've been practicing Sōtō Zen for 8 years, ask me anything
when was the last time you experienced anxiety or depression
Are you in Japan?
Can you get access to and/or scan the Skull Tantras?
Sam harris is an idiot on religion. I dont understand how someone who has experienced what he has experienced can come out of them with a reddit fedora worldview.
Why did Bodhidharma come from the west?
I am diagnosed with GAD and acute stress syndrome. I have gone through the entire medical book of GAD, benzos, pregabalin, you name it. Nothing helped. For the past 6 years I have practiced 4 hours of Zen meditation every day and so far it's the only thing that helped. Nothing else works. I want my doctor to get me on acamprosat, glutsmatergic or NMDA-medicine but he's too cautious. I can honestly say that Zazen needs to be included and prescribed.
The eyes of the homeless.
Don't get too hung up on particular scriptures
I get this; it's curiosity at an academic verging on a reconstructive level.
I have more than enough praxis on my plate; I just wanna peek under the hood of Tachikawa-ryu.
I'm sure Sam is very very used to being the smartest person in a room.
Also, fwiw, his lecture on the dangers of atheism is still decent after all these years.
I think it's even cuter that Krauss' early lecture on somethingness of void is more or less in-line with doctrines of origination.
That's wrong tho. These Tibetans are charlatans.
only materialists have faith in drugs
I'm a materialist and i don't. They just treat the symptoms, not the cause (which is incorrect perception/thinking).
They aren't entirely nihilist. They think enlightenment has meaning, obviously since they go through so much crap to keep it alive. Also, they value life in terms of minimizing suffering. So they believe in a strong sense of morals that a true nihilist wouldn't have any reason to abide by.
To summarize buddhists as nihilism is a little off. I would say it's more like absurdism but not even. It's very similar to Christianity in that they see that there is nothing worthwhile in this life, so look forwards to reaching to Gods kingdom after death. You can think of it as going to the final nirvana at the Buddha's death
the only denial is the denial that suffering is good, relevant worth it, something contrary to what normies believe, especially men
Nihilism generally posits that meaning is entirely absent in any real sense from 'reality'. Therefore things don't mean anything. Nothing matters because ultimately all is in extinction.
Buddhism takes a slightly different approach. The phenomeonology of object interaction allows for meaning to be present as a reference point between observer and observee.
Meaning doesn't "not exist", though it's still rather arbitrary.
Rather, everything is EMPTY. The computer I'm sitting at is no more 'fast' than it is a dog, or whatever.
As such the onus is on the observer to 'fill' these inherently empty things with 'stuff', be it 'meaning' in the broadest sense, Dharma, hedonism; whatever the case may be.
It's not that "nothing matters/there is no meaning" but rather "things are empty so don't get lost in their phenomenology".
>From Joy there is some bliss, from Perfect Joy yet more. From the Joy of Cessation comes a passionless state. The Joy of Sahaja is finality. The first comes by desire for contact, the second by desire for bliss, the third from the passing of passion, and by this means the fourth [Sahaja] is realized. Perfect Joy is samsara [mystic union]. The Joy of Cessation is nirvana. Then there is a plain Joy between the two. Sahaja is free of them all. For there is neither desire nor absence of desire, nor a middle to be obtained."
~Hevajra Tantra.
>the only denial is the denial that suffering is good
Lad that is not what Buddhism preachers at all. If this was the case they would be practicing atheticism and see no problem with causing suffering to others.
This guy
provides a more underlying thought that gives rise to their "denial" to suffering, but they most certainly don't say it is "good", but rather it is a result of the wrong perception.
Weak people are drawn to religion/philosophies of life. If you want to live life on your terms follow your own path. Create your own philosophy.
>It's not that "nothing matters/there is no meaning" but rather "things are empty
Sounds like nihilism to me tbqh.
#YOLO LMAO XDDD
Even though there's distinction in which meaning functionally exists in really real life with void as the substrate?
If this is nihilism, then why is Joy as real as Emptiness.
Khenpo Tsultrim's Reply
by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche
All visualizations are imagination.
All imagination is appearance/emptiness.
Without being attached to appearance/emptiness as real,
rest without fixation, without focus.
Death and no death, these are also imagined.
In the expanse of equality, there's neither death nor no death.
The same with dark and light and gods and demons.
The expanse of equality is all there is.
I have never seen a single thing that's real.